March 15, 2024
Cultural report funding cut blinds judges
A leading Māori criminal lawyer says judges will miss out on valuable information if defendants can’t offer cultural reports.
The Government has cancelled legal aid funding for the reports, which are allowed for under the Sentencing Act.
Kingi Snelgar says it means judges will have to rely on what they can learn from lawyrs and probation reports, and information about things such as the intergenerational trauma of colonisation can be overlooked.
“That’s what the Royal Commission on buse in Care has told us, that’s what we know through our own whanau, these kind of behaviours unfortunately have been passed down through generations so that information is valuable and when you look at the cost of cultural reports versus the cost say of keeping people in prison it’s really a drop in the ocean so it’s a really valuable resource and it’s sad to see they’ve decided not to continue to fund it,” Mr Snelgar says.