[Opinion] Community Justice, Maori-Style

The Crime Report

By Vincent Schiraldi

As U.S. policy makers look to dismantle mass incarceration, a pair of New Zealand programs that involve the larger community in setting parameters for punishment and rehabilitation may be worth a closer look. Earlier this month, I attended the hearing of a woman facing a vehicular homicide charge in Kaikohe, a rural town on New Zealand’s North Island. It provided an answer to a question that is increasingly being asked in our country. Liz Glazer, director of the New York Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, recently put it better than anyone else I’ve heard so far. “Have we reached the limits of what the traditional structures of the criminal justice system can produce in safety?” she wrote. “If yes, what other approaches should we use?”

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