I am on jury duty this week - and it has got me reflecting that inequality is not just about income and property - it is also about your likelihood of being the victim of crime.
I didn't get picked today, but I did get through the first ballot. It was my first time inside a courtroom and my first time inside the court building with all its security. I found it a foreign space. It is a place of extremes: well dressed, well educated and well paid judges and court staff, and many less well dressed, mostly less well paid and probably less well educated people who are clearly "in the system".
I ended up in a courtroom where a couple were being tried for rape and unlawful sexual connection amongst a range of similar charges. I can make no judgement on this case, but I was reminded of a conversation I had in 2009 with a woman working for Corrections who had been involved with this piece of research looking at who the victims of crimes are. It turns out that there are enormous inequalities in our likelihood of becoming victims.
Most
people (64%) experience no crime ever, while a mere six percent of people
experience 54% of crimes. Some victims experience crimes against them time after time after time. I remember going to a play at Christchurch Women's Prison where the women told there stories and I have to say that they were harrowing. Every single one of the women in the play had also been victims of appalling crimes of violence over and over and over again.
The research also found that those most likely to experience crime were younger, from Mäori or
‘other’ ethnic groups, unmarried, more economically vulnerable, living
in rented accommodation, in more economically deprived areas, in sole
parent households or households comprised of flatmates or ‘other’ family
combinations, in metropolitan cities (excluding Auckland), and in the
upper half of the North Island.
In other words, these are people with few resources - financial, educational or social - which might allow them to escape the experience of ongoing crime. And at the time the government cynically covered the release of this report by releasing some other document at the same time so that the media nevery picked this up. Of course our government's refusal to spend money on poverty or address housing needs or even to feed hungry kids in decile 1 and 2 schools all serve nicely to maintain the status quo or even make it worse.
And I tell you what - my observations today really tell me that it really would be cheaper to spend the money helping kids in poverty, ensuring they have access to good schooling and to decent living conditions rather than spending it on the punitive police car at the bottom of the cliff.
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