Woman’s prison visit clearance reviewed

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

Her permission to visit Hawke’s Bay Prison is now under review by Corrections, following a 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 approaches defendants and ‘‘sentences’’ them in a fake court held in a building in central Hastings.

She also chairs the 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 revealed that Reti-Kaukau had ‘‘sentenced’’ a young man to three months’ supervision last week and wrongly told him he didn’t have to go to real court to be sentenced.

Marquis Ewart, 18, believed the organisation and it was only thanks to the authentic Hawke’s Bay Restorative Justice organisation that he did attend a restorative justice meeting and avoided arrest.

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 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, which can cost thousands of dollars.

understands Reti-Kaukau is writing the reports without a request by a solicitor to do so. While the Justice Ministry funds the reports, it does not record who writes them. Justice Ministry 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.

Yesterday, a Corrections spokeswoman confirmed that Reti-Kaukau was an approved visitor at Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison ‘‘for the purposes of undertaking 27 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.

Reti-Kaukau could not be reached for comment yesterday.