Duncan Garner: Tough on crime? NZ’s justice system lets victims down again
Duncan Garner: When judges prioritise offenders’ futures over victims’ lives, something is deeply wrong. Photo / Tony Nyberg
We’ve been warned about drink-driving for decades. We’ve had ad campaigns, heart-wrenching stories and endless police crackdowns. You’ll probably recall some of those campaigns: if you drink and drive, you’re a bloody idiot, and ghost chips.
They make the message clear: if you drink and drive, you’re a loaded weapon and can easily kill.
They suggest accountability is non-negotiable. If you get tanked, get behind the wheel and show a calculated yet callous disregard for the safety of others, and kill someone in the process, you should expect serious jail time. The law says you can go to jail for up to 10 years.
But despite the messaging and the law, drunk drivers know in New Zealand it has to get pretty serious and repetitive before judges consider jailing them. It seems the “mitigating factors” that might lessen a sentence come before the rights of victims and their families.
Even killing someone while you’re driving the car drunk won’t necessarily get you sent to jail.
Take the case of Jake Hamlin in Northland. He was this week sentenced to 12 months of home detention after drinking, speeding and veering across the centre line, killing 28-year-old Samantha Williams, a rising star in the fashion world, on May 19, 2023.
Judge Greg Davis also sentenced Hamlin to 200 hours’ community work, disqualified him from driving for 12 months and ordered him to pay $8000 in reparation. But that’s it. Hamlin gets to sit at home while Samantha Williams’ family live a never-ending nightmare. No Christmases with her, no birthdays, no future.
The judge’s reasoning? Hamlin was “caught up in an excessive drinking culture.”
I don’t buy that. Hamlin was 26 years old, fully aware of his actions. He wasn’t a teenager making a first-time mistake; he was a grown man who made the conscious decision to buy booze, drink heavily and drive recklessly. When he crossed the centreline on the Whangārei straights north of Waipu, it’s thought he was going 130km/h. Williams, who was driving north to visit family, stood no chance.
We say zero tolerance for drink-driving and yet, when it matters most, the courts let us down. What’s stopping a judge saying, “Enough is enough, sorry pal, you’re doing five years.” Hamlin didn’t just break the law; he took an innocent life.