Prison visits under review after fake court revealed

Michelle Reti-Kaukau doesn’t recognise New Zealand laws and claims the authority to sentence people, yet she receives taxpayer funds to write reports for defendants and has permission to visit prisoners.

Her permission to visit Hawke’s Bay Prison is now under review by the Department of Corrections, following a Stuff article this week that revealed she was running her own ‘‘court’’ in Hawke’s Bay.

Reti-Kaukau runs an organisation calling itself Ma¯ ori Restorative Justice, which ‘‘sentences’’ defendants in a fake court held in a building in central Hastings.

She also chairs Te Ara Pumanawa Trust, which writes cultural reports for defendants, and she has Corrections permission to enter Hawke’s Bay Prison so she can meet prisoners to write the reports.

Earlier this week Stuff revealed that Reti-Kaukau had ‘‘sentenced’’ a young man, Marquis Ewart, to three months’ supervision last week and wrongly told him he didn’t have to go to real court to be sentenced.

Judge Bridget Mackintosh sentenced Ewart to nine months’ supervision. She said she did not know what the Ma¯ ori Restorative

Justice organisation was, ‘‘but it’s certainly not sanctioned by anybody’’.

Reti-Kaukau told Stuff on Monday that she had ‘‘the authority to facilitate and adjudicate the Ma¯ ori restorative justice process’’, and the defendants she dealt with were sentenced in the organisation’s own court, known as ‘‘Te Kooti Aroha’’.

She said it was fine if a judge did not recognise her organisation ‘‘because we don’t recognise your laws either’’.

A defendant or their lawyer can apply to Legal Aid for funding of a cultural report.

While the Ministry of Justice funds the reports, it does not record who writes them. The ministry’s chief operating officer, Carl Crafar, was unable to say if Reti-Kaukau had been paid to write reports, or how many she may have written.

‘‘Legal Aid Services does not contract report writers and is unable to comment on the quality of reports provided.’’

Yesterday a Corrections spokeswoman confirmed that Reti-Kaukau was an approved visitor at Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison ‘‘for the purposes of undertaking s27 Cultural Reports requested by solicitors’’.

‘‘Having received further information about this individual, we will be assessing the ongoing suitability of this person having approved visitor status,’’ she said.