Call for agency to follow up on offenders and new alcohol law. Sir Owen Glenn's long-awaited blueprint for tackling family violence
wants judges in domestic violence cases to become European-style
"inquisitors", questioning everyone involved to determine the truth and
direct the outcome.
The two-year inquiry also proposes mandatory electronic tagging of people subject to protection orders, which are often derided as "just a piece of paper".
It wants tough new alcohol laws, including higher taxes and raising the legal drinking age to 20, plus a new dedicated family violence agency to make sure people carry out court orders such as requirements to attend non-violence programmes.
The main proposals were welcomed by new Justice Minister Amy Adams, who this week asked the Law Commission to resume work on an inquisitorial system for sexual abuse cases to save victims from being retraumatised by aggressive questioning by adversarial lawyers. Her predecessor, Judith Collins, stopped the work in 2012.
An earlier "People's Report", published by the inquiry in June, said the changes should "revisit the burden of proof so that it lies with perpetrators, not victims".
The final "People's Blueprint" does not go quite so far, but says: "The inquisitorial approach neutralises the advantage that a well-funded party has over a respondent with scant resources, including the ability to drag out court processes to frustrate or 'burn off' the other party. Removing the crude 'he said, she said' contest also makes the onus of proof less relevant because the judge, not an adversarial lawyer, leads the inquiry."
The report recommends creating a new Family Violence Court, led by judges alone without juries, to handle all matters involving alleged family violence, including arguments over the care of children which are now heard in the Family Court.
It proposes restoring free pre-court counselling that was axed in Ms Collins' Family Court reforms last year, restoring wider availability of legal aid that was also cut, more victims' advocates, a "resource co-ordinator" to link with alcohol and other treatment programmes, and a new family violence crisis phone line for people who don't want to call the police or Child, Youth and Family.
For perpetrators, it proposes both electronic monitoring and dedicated houses for men who have been required by police safety orders to leave home for a few days.
The report says 80 per cent of offenders in the criminal courts have alcohol or drug problems. It recommends raising the alcohol purchase age to 20, raising excise tax on alcohol by 50 per cent and imposing minimum prices, shutting bottle stores by 10pm and bars by 4am, and curbing alcohol ads and sponsorship.
Many of the report's ideas seem likely to win bipartisan support in Parliament.
Labour promised at the recent election to revive the Law Commission's work on an inquisitorial system for sexual violence cases and to implement the commission's alcohol proposals. New justice spokeswoman Jacinda Ardern said yesterday the party would support "looking at" higher alcohol prices.
But Tauranga psychologist Hans Laven, who published a "counter-balancing" report on family violence this week, said inquisitorial courts would restore "witch-hunts" seen before the adversarial justice system evolved over the past 200 years.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/child-abuse/news/article.cfm?c_id=146&objectid=11365663
The two-year inquiry also proposes mandatory electronic tagging of people subject to protection orders, which are often derided as "just a piece of paper".
It wants tough new alcohol laws, including higher taxes and raising the legal drinking age to 20, plus a new dedicated family violence agency to make sure people carry out court orders such as requirements to attend non-violence programmes.
The main proposals were welcomed by new Justice Minister Amy Adams, who this week asked the Law Commission to resume work on an inquisitorial system for sexual abuse cases to save victims from being retraumatised by aggressive questioning by adversarial lawyers. Her predecessor, Judith Collins, stopped the work in 2012.
An earlier "People's Report", published by the inquiry in June, said the changes should "revisit the burden of proof so that it lies with perpetrators, not victims".
The final "People's Blueprint" does not go quite so far, but says: "The inquisitorial approach neutralises the advantage that a well-funded party has over a respondent with scant resources, including the ability to drag out court processes to frustrate or 'burn off' the other party. Removing the crude 'he said, she said' contest also makes the onus of proof less relevant because the judge, not an adversarial lawyer, leads the inquiry."
The report recommends creating a new Family Violence Court, led by judges alone without juries, to handle all matters involving alleged family violence, including arguments over the care of children which are now heard in the Family Court.
It proposes restoring free pre-court counselling that was axed in Ms Collins' Family Court reforms last year, restoring wider availability of legal aid that was also cut, more victims' advocates, a "resource co-ordinator" to link with alcohol and other treatment programmes, and a new family violence crisis phone line for people who don't want to call the police or Child, Youth and Family.
For perpetrators, it proposes both electronic monitoring and dedicated houses for men who have been required by police safety orders to leave home for a few days.
The report says 80 per cent of offenders in the criminal courts have alcohol or drug problems. It recommends raising the alcohol purchase age to 20, raising excise tax on alcohol by 50 per cent and imposing minimum prices, shutting bottle stores by 10pm and bars by 4am, and curbing alcohol ads and sponsorship.
Many of the report's ideas seem likely to win bipartisan support in Parliament.
Labour promised at the recent election to revive the Law Commission's work on an inquisitorial system for sexual violence cases and to implement the commission's alcohol proposals. New justice spokeswoman Jacinda Ardern said yesterday the party would support "looking at" higher alcohol prices.
But Tauranga psychologist Hans Laven, who published a "counter-balancing" report on family violence this week, said inquisitorial courts would restore "witch-hunts" seen before the adversarial justice system evolved over the past 200 years.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/child-abuse/news/article.cfm?c_id=146&objectid=11365663
