The Criminal Injustice System
August 27, 2019 By ISO editor
There will be a referendum on cannabis reform at the same time as the 2020 general election. There will be a yes or no question on the legalisation of cannabis use, but the wording of the proposed legislation is not yet known.
The criminal justice system is racist. This has to be our starting point. Māori are more likely to be stopped, questioned and searched by police than non-Māori. They are more likely to be arrested. If arrested, they are more likely to be charged. If charged, they are more likely to be convicted. If convicted, they are more likely to be jailed. Jail time is psychologically scarring and sets someone up for problems all through their life. It is hard to get work again with a criminal conviction on your record. Poverty, abuse, hopelessness and long-term unemployment are all products of the prison system. This system is biased against working-class people generally, and especially prejudiced against Māori. It is destructive of human potential.
Our attitudes to drug laws, therefore, start from our opposition to racism and the racist justice system. The amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act that allows greater police discretion to consider a “health-centered or therapeutic approach”, for us, is no solution. It will be little help to Māori, who will still face discrimination. As Fiona Hutton, a criminologist and expert on drug laws, points out, police discretion powers can actually increase inequalities. In a racist society, Māori are less likely to find “discretion” working in their favour. Current laws on cannabis give powers to the state to harass workers. Police can search your home, car, or person without a warrant if they have “reasonable grounds” to suspect you have illegal drugs. This is a huge intrusion on our liberties, and is used disproportionately against workers, youth, and people of colour.
Cannabis use is a fact of life in New Zealand society. Most people will have used cannabis by the time they are in their mid-twenties. Around ten percent of the adult population, according to the Ministry of Health’s most recent figures, use cannabis regularly, with 87 percent of them reporting no concerns from others about their drug use. Just like alcohol and tobacco, cannabis is a drug people use in a variety of ways. Many of these are harmless. Some self-destructive use is connected with coping with harm: alienation and the pressures of living in a capitalist society. The harm is going on anyway, but only cannabis is targeted by the law’s prohibition regime. Decriminalisation will take a power away from the state to regulate, control, and oppress workers. [Read More…]
Recent articles
Solidarity with Grant Brookes
Grant Brookes is the democratically elected President of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation. The NZNO last year went through a major industrial struggle to win much-needed pay increases. This included strike action, the first such action in almost three decades. Many thousands of health workers were energised by this process, and the campaign, naturally, involved […]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20190917111515im_/https://isonztest.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/gettyimages-1151097101-wb.jpg?w=110&h=110&crop=1)
Solidarity with Hong Kong from Auckland University
By Tara Dalefield Despite the cold and the scheduling in the middle of a weekday, around a hundred people gathered in Auckland University’s quad on 11am, August 6th to attend an information session concerning the protests in Hong Kong against the Chinese extradition bill. Journalists from Radio NZ and One News took recordings while […]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20190917111515im_/https://isonztest.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/chernobyl_2019_miniseries.jpg?w=110&h=110&crop=1)
Chernobyl
Chernobyl, written by Craig Mazin, dir. Johan Renck. A co-production of HBO and Sky UK. Reviewed by Keith Davies This outstanding TV miniseries covers the accident that occurred in the early hours of 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the USSR. From the confusion in the control […]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20190917111515im_/https://isonztest.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/eight_col_winston-peters-boris-johnson-2.jpg?w=110&h=110&crop=1)
Britain’s Brexit Crisis
By Martin Gregory Don’t be fooled by Boris Johnson’s jovial act. Britain’s new prime minister is a nasty hard-right Tory whose elevation has been welcomed by Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. The change over from Theresa May’s to Johnson’s government is radical. In British politics, a Cabinet reshuffle in 1962 has gone down in […]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20190917111515im_/https://isonztest.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/67427776_2864380263635069_4025950108154593280_n.jpg?w=110&h=110&crop=1)
From Ōtepoti to Ihumātao
We’re at opposite ends of these motu, but the kaupapa is the same: protect Ihumātao. 26 July, an estimated 300 people marched in Ōtepoti in solidarity with the occupation of Ihumātao. The ISO was proud to be among those marching the streets of Dunedin, blocking intersections, and showing that there are people all across […]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20190917111515im_/https://isonztest.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/britain-politics-eu-brexit-205447_514910_20190725102654.jpg?w=110&h=110&crop=1)
The Left and Brexit
By Martin Gregory In June 2016 I wrote two short pieces for a New Zealand audience that were published on the ISO website. One of these was written just before, and the other just after, the British referendum on whether to remain or leave the European Union. In the first piece I put the […]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20190917111515im_/https://isonztest.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/saturday-3.jpg?w=110&h=110&crop=1)
Ihumātao: Interview with a Protector
In the wake of group arrests and galvanizing protests over securing mana whenua rights to one of Aotearoa’s oldest settlements, Socialist Review spoke to a young protector on her personal experience as part of the ongoing occupation on the land, and the socialist conclusion that must be drawn from this struggle. The Occupation: A Personal […]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20190917111515im_/https://isonztest.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/cover-image-web.jpg?w=110&h=110&crop=1)
Teachers’ Strikes: Lessons from our Struggle
By Romany Tasker-Poland, a teacher and ISO member The teachers, primary and secondary, have had a victory (if a partial one). It has been a long fight. The first teachers’ strike was by NZEI primary teachers in August 2018. Primary teachers struck again in November in the form of rolling regional action. The last action […]
From the archive
Anzac Day: Against the Carnival of Reaction
April 24, 2014
On Anzac Day 1967, at the height of New Zealand involvement in the ‘American War’ in Vietnam, with New Zealand troops taking part in the suppression of the Vietnamese struggle for national liberation, members of the Progressive Youth Movement in Christchurch tried to lay a wreath following the dawn service in memory of those killed by imperialism in Vietnam. They were arrested and charged with disorderly behaviour. Feminists a decade later faced down a media-driven public outcry when they laid wreaths to the victims of sexual violence during war.
Lest we forget? It’s more like lest we remember. Anzac Day serves as a carnival of nationalist reaction, a day of public ritual aimed at promoting forgetting: forgetting the real legacy of New Zealand imperialism and militarism in favour of a sentimental nationalism, an anti-political celebration of national unity. [Read More…]