For those that did not see it, this article from the Fairfax papers in the weekend is well worth a read. It explores our appalling imprisonment rate, including some statistics where we dont stack up well at all
New Zealand locks up people at a rate of 199 per 100,000. The European average is about 80. Even Australia, our convict cousin, jails a third less than we do, according to figures from the International Centre for Prison Studies.
As I have said before on this blog, we have to get beyond the response that building more prisons is the answer to preventing crime. Of course keeping the likes of Graeme Burton off the streets is important, but that is not going to deal with the overall issue. I like my colleague Lianne Dalziel’s comment in the article that the basis of questioning around these issues should be “what makes our communities safer”. Continuing to lock people up without addressing the reasons behind how they got to be there will not make our communities safer.
Most would accept that crime is the result of addictions, mental ill-health, a bad start in life, poverty and other social factors, rather than because people are inherently evil, she says. So these are the issues we should be targeting with preventative and rehabilitative measures
There is optimism from those quoted in this article that more people are now prepared to look at the drivers of crime and get beyond the empty slogans and dangerous rhetoric of the Sensible Sentencing Trust/David Garrett types. I hope that is true because another election fought around who can throw out the toughest slogans is not what we need as a country. As Greg Newbold says in the article we need to start thinking in terms of 25 year goals to change a culture of violence, rather than in three year political cycles.
As politicians we have a job to come up with better policies, and that is something Labour is working on, but I also think the time has come for a broad based community grouping that can promote the importance of the long term approach to addressing the causes of crime and breaking the cycle. I for one would help that group in any way I can.
Yep life’s pretty grim for some who are a crim
and Spud – Life is pretty grim for those who have to live with the actions of those crims.
A raped daughter – a murdered wife.
THEY KNOW that what they are doing is wrong – there needs to be a consequence for their actions.
Sadly – I have been close to three murders.
My classmate killed his neighbor when we were in intermediate school (Cambridge). He murdered yet again years later having been rehabilitated for temporary insanity.
My neighbor murdered his 2 yo daughter. http://www.safe-nz.org.nz/Data/croslanddavid.htm
My friend was murdered in Hamilton. His killer actually got bail awaiting trial and attacked another person with a bottle while breaking curfew.
People like this cannot be ‘fixed’ – they need consequence for their actions and perhaps when people close to are involved then perhaps the ‘give a hug and they will be right’ brigade will feel different.
How many of you would be happy having a convicted pedophile living next door to you and your kids whilst he was been rehabilitated?
@ Chris, it seems to me that you, like so many others, have missed the point. I agree that they ‘need consequences’ but the more we pile up the consequences, the more they run around raping and killing. I’m no Einstein, but more prisons and longer sentences and more cops with even more draconian powers and weapons does not seem to be doing the trick. So, what’s the answer? Still more of the same? How much longer does a sensible solution have to be sacrificed in order for Garth McVicar to get his media fix?
@chris – sorry to hear that, yes I do believe that violent, perverted and homocidal people should be locked up for the good of the country.
@ Jennifer – NO – Im not missing the point.
The report says “a bad start in life, poverty and other social factors, rather than because people are inherently evil, she says. So these are the issues we should be targeting with preventative and rehabilitative measures”
Im sorry no – people (generally) know that what they are doing is wrong – and choose to do it anyway. If someone has that mindset / values then there isnt preventative rehabilitative measures thats going to fix them. The only thing that does is if the consequence is a big enough deterrent.
Crime more than not is a choice.
There are a percentage who can be fixed and at the moment we don’t even really try, this costs us hundred’s of millions a year…
Here’s what I think would work:
- Seperate Crime into catergories Serious, Minor and Misdemeanor, maybe draw the line at rape and above (as Serious), assualt and burglary and above till Serious crimes (as Minor), Misdemeanor below…
- For those who commit Serious crimes you recieve a prison term till 55 years old or 20 years (if over 35)…
- For those who commit Minor crimes – on you first offence you recieve a three month custodial sentence (after diversion etc has been exhausted) and then 1 year’s accomodation based rehab, training, mental health assistance, literacy, etc plus 1 year’s intense support when you are on your own, second offence – same deal, third offence you recieve a Serious crime sentence…
- Misdemeanor’s get dealt with as Summary Offences currently do, until someone has committed three, then following offending is catagorised as Minor…
If you have invested almost 5 years into fixing a person at the “Minor” level (and more at the Misdemeanor level in all likelihood) then I think a long term sentences are appropriate…
Chris the vast majority of people in prison are in there for crimes other than murder, rape and paedophilia. You want to pull those out to get an emotive response, fine.
Everyone can play the “Not in my backyard” card. Again you want an emotive response, fine.
But the basics of it is that we have communities of socioeconomic deprivation where criminal activity starts at a young age, escalates, and ends up in a lot of people going to prison. You satisfy your vindictiveness. What then? Where is the idea of ‘prevention is better than cure’?
And cheaper too, can we afford and do we really want Corrections to be an ever increasing share of the Budget.
Can we afford to have kids who could become contributors to their local communities and future tax payers locked up instead, costing you and me the equivalent of being put up at a suite in the Heritage or the Intercontinental every night of the year?
And lets not forget how inequity in society is a huge driver of crime and ill health.
I don’t consider myself vindictive – I’ve had a crime committed against me and wouldn’t be sorry to see this person put away.
Does anyone have any evidence from around the world where crime stats have fallen as a result of intervention or action in lower socioeconomic areas? And I don’t mean zero tolerance.
Yeah likewise, I’ve been the victim of crime. The perp was not put away in prison – but in that situation it didn’t make sense to do so and I thought the judge made a good decision overall despite me still holding anger about what had happened, at the time.
I know of some other more serious perps who well deserved their share of time away though.
I suppose Simon that the best intervention is to reduce social inequality in a society and to improve community cohesiveness. Don’t have any stats on hand tho, apart the ones everyone already knows about how unequal societies have more social and law and order problems than more equal ones.
RedLogix made a comment regarding single mothers over at Bowalley Road that I think has application here. He said that an increase in solo motherhood is the result of young men lacking the means for building lives, and I think that applies to imprisonment as well. Firstly, people do not earn enough to support families. Even if there are top-ups to make up the difference, these top-ups come at the whim of governments and eliminate luck and a sense of progress – get a rise and you end up owing the IRD. Secondly,there is such a thing as security in housing only for those at the top of the heap – even the middle-class sometimes live in terror of losing one of their two jobs, and thus the house, let alone those who are at the mercy of the rental market, and whatever approach a government decides to take on HNZ.
These two factors have a huge affect on how people are socialised, and how people think the “What am I going to do with my life?” can realistically be addressed. With the former, there is no consistent community to inculcate a sense of values. With the second, there is no security upon which to depend in order to fulfill a plan, and perhaps, because of the former, no ability to even make one.
To address such problem would require a serious change in tack from the past 25 years. How possible this is is another question. But people who are in the position to build lives are much less likely to turn to crime, and when NZers were mostly able to build lives we had a very low crime rate.
@ Loota – its not a matter of pulling them out to get an emotive response – its sad to say that all three Murder, rape, and pedophilia have impacted those around me very much.
It also may be a shock to you that being a victim of crime is emotive. Having your home ransacked by people does not make you happy in your own home.
Having your kids assaulted when out on the town makes you fear for their safey. Having a friend killed by a drunk driver – also makes you scared each time your kids are late home.
Being a victim is emotive.
You also say I pull out the “not in my backyard card” – well – sure I do – but its not a card – and you happily dodnt have the courage to answer it.
Would you be happy with a convicted rapist, child molester, living next door to you and your kids (if you have any – I dont know obv.).
What about someone who is a re-activist drink driver when you have kids living on the street and he comes home drunk in the car.
What about a wife beater. Or some gang members with a long list of offenses.
Perhaps you would be fine with people who have been convicted of selling drugs from their home – or making P in rental houses? possibly poisoning your kids at the same time.
Its not an emotion card – its fact – no right minded person wants scum like that living next to them – and nor should we have to put up with them.
The list of undesirables is huge – but despite you talking about an equal society – Im guessing by choice you would not want them right next to your family. Bit of double standards there.
Seriously, this is disingenuous at best. Labour spent the best part of the last decade juicing the tariffs on crime for craven political motivations.
New Zealand’s stupidly high incarceration rates are almost everything to do with policy settings established under Labour.
I would welcome a change in direction which reemphasized prison and looked for meaningful ways of addressing the causes of crime. But to pretend like this is nothing to do with Labour’s time in government is a shocking detachment from the truth.
Labour needs to clearly own its past record on crime and overtly and clearly declare that it’s now in a new space and will help the current Government to reduce our levels of imprisonment. It’s really only with a broad political consensus that we will get meaninful and lasting change.
These road to Damascus moments in Opposition are risible when, in the full thrust of an election campaign, you decide to outbid your opponents by offering the masses the blood of petty criminals – as you have done repeatedly in the past.
Sorry, I wish I could believe that Labour could bring this country to its senses on matters of punishment. But your track record is appalling. Frankly, until the rubber hits the road – politically speaking – and we see you genuinely and openly campaign on a platform of de-imprisonment for a range of crimes – I just don’t buy it.
I think these kind of backdoor slams on National for a situation you’re ostensibly responsible for is actually a perpetuation of the kind of political football playing that led us to this situation.
I wish I could believe you were genuine. I really do. But I just can’t buy it.
@Chris – my point was to emphasise the need for early intervention so that the crimes were not committed in the first place – we know what the drivers of crime are now and we need to put in place effective programmes that minimise the risks of all the dysfunctional factors leading to offending behaviour. I am not in the business of “excusing” serious violent offending, but how many people are in our prisons as a result of undiagnosed/untreated mental illness or brain damage, or who offended while under the heavy influence of alcohol or other drug (not an excuse but a lot of this is untreated) or who has multiple issues arising from their own childhood abuse, neglect and educational/social failure? I agree some people have to be locked up forever; that’s why we said in government that parole was to be determined by the safety of the community. But if we refuse to learn the lessons that these damaged, dysfunctional individuals present, we are condemned to repeat them. Read some literature from the Brainwave Trust and maybe you will understand that most of these “monsters” were not born that way – foetal alcohol syndrome excepted – and maybe then you will understand why babies “incubated in terror” may not be capable of thinking and feeling the way you and I do. Answers not excuses – that’s what I am looking for!
@Unpleasantly Odouriferous- as the article says, we came into government on the back of a petition that demanded tougher sentences – no parole and hard labour – and victims rights (but for the Sensible Sentencing Trust they seem to think that victims’ needs revolve around the sentence given to the offender). We responded to the petition by addressing victims rights and by adjusting our parole & sentencing laws. But at the same time we were ensuring that the work was being done on those underlying drivers of crime – the Conduct Disorder Working Group, which we established, has produced a wealth of evidence around what works/doesn’t work and hopefully this government will act on that. Labour has offered to work with the government on this as it remains our unfinished business. It is wrong to say we were not addressing it.
“Simon says:
Does anyone have any evidence from around the world where crime stats have fallen as a result of intervention or action in lower socioeconomic areas?”
Yes, there’s plenty, you might find this interesting:
http://www.crime-prevention-intl.org/uploads/media/International_Report_2010.pdf
You can see prevention and early intervention is the way to reduce crime, but a related branch of research is showing one of the most important causal factors of crime is income equality and lack of “trust”
http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/ckq068v1
Many of the current policies in NZ tend both to widen income inequality and increase distrust (e.g. increased GST, less accessible welfare, 90 day redundancies, less taxation on higher incomes).
If they do crime, lock them up. it is meaningless to talk about how many prisoners we “should” have.
RRM – have you missed the point that prison can act as a training centre providing increasingly hardened, increasingly violent and increasingly networked criminals for the community?
chris said:
Ah I see the discussion going back to 18th and 19th century penal colonies now. Where shall we put it? Perhaps we could redesignate Kapiti Island as a prison island?
Pulling out the emotion card again and the not in my backyard card again?
Yeah mate I know what its like personally to be the victim of crime thanks, I don’t need your lecturing to tell me.
How come some of the people who say liquor stores should be anywhere they wanna be, say prisons can’t be anywhere we want them to be?
There is less danger of harm to person and property living next to a prison than next to a liquor store.
I wonder if this discussion makes us think more about the concept that our prisons arent working to reduce crime. IF we use the argument that we have to keep locking them up while we think of other things to do, we will never get to the other things (which are well researched and have to start sometime)
Deleted defamatory Trevor
Sorry Trevor, I thought the absolute truth is not defamation, however below are bits from news paper stories
Empty slogans and dangerous rhetoric of the Sensible Sentencing Trust/David Garrett types and Garth Mcvicar want people like Bruce Emery, the Manurewa man who stabbed 15 year old tagger Pihema Cameron to death, punished with home detention or set free with fine which gives the signal, it’s OK to knife some one if they commit a minor crime and make you anger.
On the other hand they want revenge and sever penalties and no parole for anyone else with a similar crime as Bruce Emery.
Mcvicar has been getting media attention over and over again playing the same tune on the record player that is stuck on a one track message along side his victims he uses for his agenda, but Pihema Cameron is a forgotten dead and buried media thought.
The link below is Garth Mcvicar bragging in his own words about his youth.
http://www.ashburtononline.co.n z/site/index2.php?option=com_conten t&do_pdf=1&id=170731
(Mcvicars boarding school where he was once caned 36 times in one day. On another occasion a policeman who caught him hooning around in his car, drove him out to Fern Hill, took his shoes off him and made him walk 20 kilometres back to his car.)
Do we need two faced politics, or lynch mob groups like the Sensible Sentencing trust that have double standards and hypocritical views on what he calls justice.
Is Garth Mcvicar judge jury and hangman of NZ? and why do we have to listen or read about him, it’s the Media that’s unfairly placed him in public eye with propaganda, do we need a image Mcvicar portrays such as death penalties, Mcvicar said we should tear a leaf from the Singapore law book, just as they pulled the trap door and hung that brave young Australian man while his mother waited outside, meaning introducing the death penalty to NZ,
I read in news paper Mcvicar wants compulsory military training for all school leavers and introduce canning back into schools and the rights to smack children including canning.
What Mcvicar said about Pihema Cameron parents, it was their fault to, and they should not have let him roam the streets, but on the other hand Mcvicar boast hooning around in his car in his youth as it was 15 years old to own car then and brags 36 canes in one day at school?
Mcvicar even wants curfews on teenagers which if you gave everything Mcvicar wanted, what was the use of fighting the Nazis in world war two.
Garth Mcvicar and his small hand full SST members that mostly are traumatised victims seeking revenge, is the small same bunch and are not growing but actually shrinking and not the numbers Mcvicar brags on about.
I think you all know from common sense Mcvicar is deleted. personal abuse Clare
He heart feels for the Cameron family and very sorrow for what Mcvicar has said to them in front of Media and the double standards that we, as NZers are letting Mcvicar get away with.
I didn’t know this site existed until today when someone unknown to me emailed me a copy of Denis Stewart’s 5am response to this blog – so I’d like to respond.
Garth McVicar is trying to achieve accountability by those who commit crimes, and in some cases those who give people the opportunity (lack of supervision) to commit crimes. What’s wrong with that?
He’s trying to achieve a balance by getting recognition of what the victims suffer, not just what kind of excuse the perp had for committing the crime. What’s wrong with that?
This problem is not going to be solved overnight, and the solution is early intervention in the identified drivers of crime. A large number of crimes are committed under the influence of P, and the Labour Gov’t sat on their hands for 9 years and did nothing about this.
As SST’s Spokesperson on Drug Issues, and the mother of a one-time P user, I have been campaigning (with Garth’s support) for 3 years for support for families to intervene in illicit P use (mandatory treatment – which CAN be successful, the earlier the better) BEFORE our family members go on to commit the horrendous crimes they’re capable of – and no-one is interested !!! John Key launched the P Plan which should have solved this problem – but the Government is tackling every issue EXCEPT current P users who do not accept they have a problem. Parents of P users are told to just detach themselves, walk away.
Until the Government deals directly with the DEMAND for P, nothing will change. As long as there is a DEMAND for P, someone will make it, and more violent crimes will be committed. It’s that simple.
I once read a very interesting book by a former governor of a large British prison who had left the prison service and turned into an acadamic…He did a lot of research and linked the rise in the number of serial killers in Britain to the implimentation of the far right policies which began with Maggie Thatcher. Most older NZers would say that our own social decline accelerated after 1984 with the implimentation of similar policies here in NZ. These policies created an upward distribution of wealth..think Hart , Fay , Richwhite etc
Most of these people now live in Sydney , the South of France , London or in other more exotic climes..they do not have to live in the NZ they largely created.
We still have this kind of govt , so expect further decline..John Key is the ultimate sock puppet. Big business is calling all the shots and now the moolah is flooding in from off shore. Nice.
Accountability
Mcvicar praising the death sentence of the young Australian in Singapore the moment he was swinging by the neck, wants canning and smacking children reintroduced, compulsory military training, curfews on teenagers and death sentance.
Supports the reasons of slaughtered 15 year old graffiti writer and blame the parents instead of Emery who is said, anger problems well before he knifed the boy to death and still has anger problems and why his parole is denied recently.
Using post-traumatic stress disorder victims to parade in fromt of the media while opening memories of horror that is best left to heal with love and kindness and let the just system do its job, instead Mcvicar falsely leading them into court battles venting hate and revenge that would drain what is left of the victims souls especially when they have not a chance in hell.
As far as P goes you say your daughter was a onetime user, maybe you should respect her privacy and not sure why Mcvicar is your back bone for Mcvicar is meant for violent crimes, like murder and rapes however contradictive it seems and now muscling in on any law and order issues that seeks media publicity stunt.
Alcohol is just as damming as P if more as alcohol is readily available at every corner of society and the cause of alcoholism and violence especially domestic violence, rotting livers and heart disease the tax payer is left to deal with.
Not many people use P, I know none personally but I know many that are alcoholics and have caused crimes and disharmony in society from drunkenness.
Rapes, violent assaults, murder, child sexual abuse and car accidents causing death is the common reality that surrounds a alcoholic or drunken youth and why our prisons are full of the said offences which P is a small part of it.
What needs to be promoted in NZ is more love and solutions of causes and not the need for hate and revenge motives that have the thinking of the dark ages and the mentality that goes with it, NZ does not need a police state or the likes of Garth Mcvicars propaganda .
I have lived near a city that recently had 80.000 people die in an earth quake which many where children that where in the buildings during school at the time.
In China it’s a one child family so the partners of children lost everything including their house cloths lively hood.
I look at the overall picture or reality of suffering and not the nitpickers.
Sorry I made a mistake when I said (As far as P goes you say your daughter was a onetime user) the news paper article link below you says, son.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/75901/drug-test-kit-kids-criticised
(Christine Davey, from Auckland, who has not seen her drug-addicted son for two years)
@Tracey: “In 1992, the 700 liquor stores in the area – more than in the whole state of Pennsylvania – acted as magnets for crime.”
And some people need reminding that Orwell’s 1984 is a novel, not a training manual.
NZ herald paper reminder about Garth Mcvicars legal adviser to the Sensible Sentencing Trust
David Garrett law and order
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz-el ection-2008/news/article.cfm?c_id=1 501799&objectid=10543271
“three strikes” law and order policy, stunned panellists and production staff on TV One’s Eye To Eye with behaviour described as “obnoxious” and “unbelievably unprofessional”.
Sources said Garrett turned up drunk and offended production staff when the Willie Jackson-fronted show was recorded at TVNZ studios in June.
“He was so extreme, I couldn’t believe it,” said one. “He was in the green room and he was so drunk. Another said: “He disgraced himself. The show was a complete disaster”.
One studio staffer was so concerned about Garrett’s condition she alerted executive producer Claudette Hauiti. After talking to Garrett, Hauiti decided to let him appear on the show.
During the show, Garrett, speaking slowly and occasionally slurring, made rambling comments which were rubbished by the other panellists, particularly former Act MP Deborah Coddington.Garrett: “Paedophiles, like homosexuals, 30 years ago homosexuals had, according to experts, a disease and they needed to be cured and it was a spectacular failure because homosexuality is a sexual orientation, so we decided that because there were 10 per cent of people who were homosexual it was no longer a disease. Paedophiles cannot be cured any better than …”
Coddington: “You can’t bring homosexuality into it … ”
Jackson later dismissed it as a “stupid analogy” and accused Garrett of having an “obsession” with homosexuals.
Hauiti said Eye To Eye regularly sought out controversial guests and Garrett was invited on as a legal adviser to the Sensible Sentencing Trust. “I did find him to be obnoxious. I told him we would never have him back again.”
Coddington said she was shocked by Garrett’s attitude: “He was really rude to me. He walked up and said `Deborah Coddington, my brother hates you’.”
She said recording was stopped several times because of Garrett’s behaviour but didn’t think any more about the incident until Act announced Garrett as a list candidate.
“Then I saw a picture of him and I thought, `holy moly, it’s him’.
I live in china near a city that had an earth quake that killed 68,712 and 17,921 missing 374,643 injured on September 22, 2008.
It was during the day time and the children where in the buildings at school.
Majority of the people killed where children.
There is no social welfare and the people lost their homes, lively hood and cloths and the worst part is in China, a one child per family, lost everything imaginable and with next to no chance of rebuilding their lives,
However they are rebuilding their lives and not dragging on about the suffering that {deleted. please no personal abuse, Grant} Garth Mcvicar preaches to victimes who has no idea of the magnitude of real suffering such as thousands of children dying each day of starvation and diseases we all turn a blind eye to..
The Rwandan Genocide in 1994, mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people over the course of approximately 100 days are getting on with their lives and forgiving the murderers and the past.
In Srebrenica known as the Srebrenica genocide July 1995 killing of more than 8,000 men and boys,
Which many where placed in trench dug out by bulldozers then surrounded with machine guns and mowed down; I saw a picture of a mountain of bodies when they tried to crawl over each other to get out of pit as they were gunned down.
This was a modern society in Europe.
One small example of the human treatment at that time (A Serb told a mother to make her child stop crying, and when it continued to cry he took it and slit its throat, after which he laughed)
My point here is they have all moved on as suffering and revenge would be disastrous for a society to linger on such pain and horror and why we gave forgiveness to the Nazis in Germany and now they are friends including the grandparents that some have worked in concentration camps killing people daily.
We have {deleted, please no personal abuse, Grant} Garth Mcvivcar highlighting and parading any traumatized and burnt out victim he can for media attention and reminding them year after year of their traumatised lives.
In NZ if any serious crime is committed its highlighted that day on the Media but not only that day but ongoing for years and years going in circles of reminded misery with hate and revenge.
I do not mean to mention China again, the news papers here are positive and have almost no crime articles, the reasons are, they already know and do not need the media to ram it down their throats each and every day and need to be positive thinking to survive and have harmony such as the victimes of the earth quake that killed 68,712 and 17,921 missing 374,643 injured on September 22, 2008.
{Deleted. Denis, I appreciate the passion you have about these issues but this comment contains far too much in the way of personal abuse and comment. I dont think it adds to the debate in the original post. Please refrain from this tone or you will go into moderation. Grant}
Chris- are you saying you would rather focus on punishment than on deterrent, genuine provable ways to prevent crime so that the three murders you are close to would never have happened, or even one of them might not have happened?
Why wont someone in labour start quoting Power back at himself, when he said national would do what it took to lower crime, genuinely and wouldnt be scared of it being labelled the “soft option”. Or is Labour too scared to risk the backlash of the ignorance of those who believe harsh penalties lower crime.
It IS possible to have consequences AND initiatives to prevent crime BUT NOT when 450m goes to prison building and then no money is left for ways to intervene and prevent escalating behaviour which might result in crime.
Great post Lianne.
Sensible Sentecning having a focus on vicims is one thing but they seem to focus on a very very small percentage of overall victims of crime.
I understand the statistics on reporting of sexual crimes and the subsequent guilty verdicts is astonishing. Those are societal problems, based on what people deep down will accept.
Much easier for folks to rail for hard labour than confront how their own attitudes contribute to crime in our society.
Hi Grant
I can understand you may think I have shown in my writing abuse against Garth Mcvicar and David Garrett. You are wrong as all I am doing is speaking the absolute truth and now some of that truth is slowly coming out, for example, {deleted, we are being careful about the suppression order here, although I appreciate that other media outlets appear to have broken it, Grant} I have seen expert manipulators ands spinners and when I saw David Garrett publically on TV news running down the head of psychiatry Tongan hospital, Mapa Puloka and his wife, Garrett is a perfect example of that spinner.
David Garrett said he had only a speeding ticket before, but {deleted, as above, Grant}
Garrett said he was attacked from behind and had his jaw broken, to have a jaw broken you would need to be hit from the front also a WHO member and the head of psychiatry Tongan hospital, Mapa Puloka who is highly respected for his kind deeds to help mentally ill, would be no coward.
Garrett said to live TV,Mapa Puloka and his wife had a violent dysfunctional life on his say so to avoid blame during his street fight outside a bar.
I was in a joint venture project with the King of Tong during that time where I lived and know the bar Garrett was brawling at and the Italian women that owned it, she made my vegetarian Italian spaghetti dishes regular,
In Tonga If you are an obnoxious drunk and lewd to women like Garrett, it’s a ticking time bomb as Garrett is now in parliament.