Kerre Woodham: The Police Commissioner and Minister tried to explain the inexplicable this morning

If you were listening to the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, and why wouldn't you be? You would have heard the Police Commissioner and the Police Minister trying to explain the inexplicable.

How a young man with violent tendencies had assaulted his partner, threatened to take out her family, was able to get his hands on a shotgun and wreak havoc with it in downtown Auckland, killing two, wounding eight.

Ultimately, it comes down to a call by an individual judge - and they will never be able to get it right 100% of the time. Christie Marceau was murdered by a young man out on bail after previously offending against her.  Blessie Gotingco was run down, raped, and murdered by a man on electronic monitoring. And now we have Matu Reid who joins the roll call of shame.  

I feel for the judges. I really do.

As Andrew Coster said this morning, there is no perfect equation that will allow judges to get it right 100 per cent of the time. And when they do get it wrong, the consequences are just awful. For some of us in our jobs, we can make mistakes and the consequences are not fatal or devastating.  

I make mistakes in my job - and people get really annoyed and cross with me and I feel terrible about it but. At least I know I haven't got somebody's death on my hands. You're a doctor. You're a judge. You're a police officer. You get it wrong. There are major consequences - and there is no perfect solution.  

Listening to Andrew Coster, at the end of the interview it sounded to me like he was constitutionally bound to not say a single solitary thing, but he was jolly well encouraging Mike to do so.

I don't think that ‘good on you’ sounded sarcastic or ironic.

I don't know what the Police Commissioner was thinking, but what it sounded like he was saying is I have my job to do, you keep doing yours.

You keep questioning. You keep asking. You keep pointing out that cutting prison numbers has not made New Zealand a safer place to be.

That when you allow discount, after discount, after discount, after discount and you're encouraged and exhorted to apply discount, after discount, after discount as a member of the judiciary then you run the risk of having what happened yesterday, happen again.

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