cultural reports should never have been stopped
Note: this was originally published on 30/8/2025 on the old wordpress.com blog. Reposting here with a little light editing because, well, the points made are probably going to remain relevant for a while yet.
This article on Newsroom a little over a year ago did not come as a surprise. Of course everybody involved in the courts is spending more money elsewhere to make up for the holes left by stopping the “cultural reports”. The Section 27 cultural reports should never have been stopped. And of course more money is going to psych and AOD reports, and lawyers, Probation Officers, etc, are having to pick up the slack. As Emma Priest is quoted in this article:
“These specialist reports are essential for rehabilitation pathways forward. Offenders benefit from them. The prisons rely on them. The community gets the benefit and there are fewer victims when rehab works. I expect, on a cost-benefit analysis, they save taxpayers money in the long run as they help effect change. The more people who get help the better,”
And there it is.
Nothing happens in isolation. There are very few people who wake up one morning and decide to go for a career in crime. The people in the dock are not monsters, and they are not merely “offenders” or “criminals”. They are, in fact, fully-formed, multi-dimensional human beings, not terribly different from you or me.
Yes, for them to get to the dock means they have been accused of doing bad things. If things have reached the point of all these reports being written, then the prosecutor has managed to persuade the court that they have, in fact, done these bad things.
(It is important to remember that a conviction means only that a court has been persuaded that you have done what the prosecution accuses you of having done.)
Nothing happens in isolation.
There are so many factors that contribute to a person being tried and convicted by a court. Bad decision making is only one of those factors. The point of all these reports that get written for sentencing – psychological and/or psychiatric reports; alcohol and other drugs assessments; Section 27 cultural reports, back when the government still allowed them; the Provision of Advice to Courts written by a Probation Officer; et cetera – is to examine all these factors so that an appropriate sentence can be decided on.
This is not about getting people lighter sentences or an easier ride. This is a recognition that jailing is failing (link is to an Australian site, but the principles hold true here, too), that simply throwing people in prison for however long is not going to magically make them behave. This is about recognising the complex mess of factors that lead to people finding themselves in trouble with the law, and figuring out what can be done so that they leave prison as functional members of society who will not go on to re-offend.
Take a look at Section 27 of the Sentencing Act:
27 Offender may request court to hear person on personal, family, whanau, community, and cultural background of offender (1) If an offender appears before a court for sentencing, the offender may request the court to hear any person or persons called by the offender to speak on—
(a) the personal, family, whanau, community, and cultural background of the offender: (b) the way in which that background may have related to the commission of the offence: © any processes that have been tried to resolve, or that are available to resolve, issues relating to the offence, involving the offender and his or her family, whanau, or community and the victim or victims of the offence: (d) how support from the family, whanau, or community may be available to help prevent further offending by the offender: (e) how the offender’s background, or family, whanau, or community support may be relevant in respect of possible sentences. (2) The court must hear a person or persons called by the offender under this section on any of the matters specified in subsection (1) unless the court is satisfied that there is some special reason that makes this unnecessary or inappropriate.
(3) If the court declines to hear a person called by the offender under this section, the court must give reasons for doing so.
(4) Without limiting any other powers of a court to adjourn, the court may adjourn the proceedings to enable arrangements to be made to hear a person or persons under this section.
(5) If an offender does not make a request under this section, the court may suggest to the offender that it may be of assistance to the court to hear a person or persons called by the offender on any of the matters specified in subsection (1).
Now, that’s not so scary, is it?
What is scary is all the factors that lead young people to crime. I deal with a lot of people who have been abused at home or in state- or faith-based care; who have grown up in poverty; whose parents were addicts; whose FASD/ADHD/some other flavour of neurodivergence was not diagnosed until they were in prison and so who were written off as bad, disruptive children at school, and and so who were failed by the education system; or simply were too brown to be taken seriously or treated fairly by their racist teachers; et cetera. I work with a lot of people emerging from prison carrying such a weight of childhood trauma, intergenerational trauma, addiction, mental and physical health conditions, and poorly understood neurodivergence, that it is no surprise when I observe the lack of basic life skills – when have these people ever been given a chance?
All of those reports prepared for sentencing give insight into the factors that lead a person to crime. Once those factors are understood, an appropriate sentence can be decided on. Options for mental health care, training, and education can be explored, as can ways to restore healthy whānau relationships. Addictions can be treated. People can then emerge at the end of their sentences better prepared to function in and contribute to society.
So bring back the Section 27 reports, along with funding, and funding to properly regulate and professionalise this “industry”, because the money invested now will lead to vastly larger sums of money saved in the future – and, more importantly, less crime, less destruction, less human suffering.
We’re so fond of saying “He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.” Perhaps we should, you know, actually mean it.
Or if we’re going to focus on quick, simplistic, easy solutions to save a bit of money in the short term, perhaps we should take a good, hard look at that traditional Pākehā drive to bash those less fortunate, more vulnerable than ourselves.