Mark Keown

I see Roger Kahui was convicted yesterday to 16 years in prison for rape. Now that sounds rather harsh! But to me it is not enough. This guy on a pretense got a woman to let him in to her house and for four hours brutally raped her. She only got away because he made a mistake and she was able to run to a nearby petrol station and get help. Kahui before this had spent half his life in jail and had been convicted 130 times! One NZ Herald article notes that this number would be far higher if he had not been in prison so much! Now I am all for restorative justice to a point. It is good to see the reconciliation of victim and perpetrator, to see both parties fully restored. I do not like jail in many ways, the gathering together of criminals in what often turns out to be a school of crime. It also leads, as in the case of Kahui, to criminals who cannot function on the outside and repeatedly offend to go back to jail. Several years ago a guy walked into our house in Henderson and stole my wa...

I was shocked watching the news last night seeing the story about the arrest of a ring of men from around the world who watch paedophilia live on the net. It even involves people requesting of the criminals that they do this and that to these poor kids. This is shocking and a disgrace to our civilisation. These people should be castrated and incarcerated for life! I am not an advocate of the death penalty but when I read of such heinous crimes I believe there is a next best thing. Kids are precious. They are vulnerable and depend on our love and care for them. Anyone who violates them sexually deserves nothing but the fullest treatment of the law. Some may bemoan my attitude too harsh advocating 'restorative justice' rather than punitive. I agree with many of the notions of restorative justice and our justice system needs much work in this regard. I agree that minor offences in this regard can be dealt with in a restorative way. However, another function of justice is protectio...