Ministry pulls cultural report funds

The Ministry of Justice has stopped funding cultural reports for offenders in a move an experienced lawyer says ‘‘flies in the face’’ of the Government’s push to reduce the prison population.

Cultural reports examine an offender’s culture and provide sociological reasons why their crime happened and how it can be prevented. They are given to judges prior to sentencing.

A barrister and solicitor, who did not want to be identified, said there had been a growing practice among defence lawyers to commission these reports to help their clients.

‘‘It’s about social disadvantage. The reports can lead to significant discounts on a person’s sentence,’’ he said.

‘‘Sometimes you’re wanting that discount because if a person is to be sentenced to home detention they must be sentenced to a prison sentence of no more than two years. Sometimes you need the report to drag the discount beneath that line. Commissioning of the reports is a big thing in Auckland. Not as much elsewhere yet but it’s growing.’’

Cultural reports were ordered under section 27 of the Sentencing Act 2002, which allows any offender to ask that the court be informed of their family, community and cultural background before passing sentence.

Information provided to Stuff under the Official Information Act showed 224 cultural and community reports were compiled for criminal cases between 2004 and 2017.

However, the Justice Ministry only recently became aware that some judges had been requesting these written documents.

A ministry spokesperson said that while the Sentencing Act allows a judge to hear from people who have knowledge of an offender’s cultural background, it does not specifically state that a written report should be compiled.

Written reports prepared to date have been funded by the Justice Ministry, which chose to stop doing so on June 29.

Justice Minister Andrew Little had asked the ministry to urgently provide advice on how cultural reports could be better utilised, the spokesperson said.

Little was out of the country and not available for comment.

At last week’s Justice Summit, he acknowledged the ‘‘appalling’’ over-representation of Ma¯ ori in prisons and said the Government was determined to face the political headwinds to change that.

However, cutting funding for cultural reports ‘‘flies in the face of that’’, the barrister and solicitor said.

‘‘The reports can lead to significant discounts on a person’s sentence.’’ Unnamed barrister