Risk Taking.

A Napier man Richard Miller, 45, is facing a charge of behaving threateningly, two charges of indecent acts with a girl under 12, two of abducting a girl under 12 for sex, three charges of raping a girl under 12, indecently assaulting a girl over 16, supplying cannabis oil, and two charges of unlawful sexual connection with a girl under 12 ... Miller was arrested on September 19 after he was seen with a six-year-old girl in a car parked in a Napier park ... Miller's family had sent abusive texts to the mother of one of his alleged victims.

Judge Bridget Mackintosh said Miller's lawyer would find it difficult to organise a defence case if Miller remained at Hawke's Bay Prison.

This has not constituted a problem in the past, after all 20 miles does not seem an insurmountable hurdle in preparing a defence.

She felt electronic bail would minimise the risk of further offending and was "a viable alternative to custody".
She granted Miller electronic bail to live at his home in Pirimai, Napier.

Given the described circumstances, it seems the reason given does not warrant home detention nor the rather obvious risks involved in this ... and it certainly shows no consideration for the feelings of the victims and their families.
Additionally, it is quite common that imminent incarceration realises a surge in offending ... particularly for sexual offences.
If home detention results in further offending I am sure the judge will unreservedly accept full responsibility for this.

Why?

Now surfing the net, as one tends to do from time to time, this was happened across on Climate Audit. The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is a logical fallacy in which information that has no relationship is interpreted or manipulated until it appears to have meaning ...The fallacy is related to the clustering illusion, which refers to the tendency in human cognition to interpret patterns in randomness where none actually exist.


Now in a recent study, Otago University researchers analysed the cases of 7200 New Zealand women who died of cancer between 1988 and 1997. Occupational data was taken from death certificates ... but, Statistics NZ has stopped noting occupations on death certificates, so the data is no longer easily available. Nor does the cancer registry make a note of occupation.


Why not? ... and who makes the decisions as to what information will be recorded and the rationale behind these decisions?


Without 'good data' all that is left are the apriori intuitives, the texas sharpshooter who draws the target around the cluster of shots.
This unfortunately is the case with: A & E admissions to hospital - none , to my knowledge keep good records of frequency of referral/admission, reason for referral/admission, or even attempt to identify source (geographical location); reading or general academic failings in schools - these are apparently attributable to geographic area (i.e. low S.E.S. areas), definitely not to the school that perpetuated such deficit; greater or lesser recidivism rates resulting from different programmes from different prisons, and the impact of greater social engineering - for example why was baseline data not kept on child behaviour in schools prior to the removal of corporal punishment ... prior to the removal of 'slapping' as a corrective measure for misbehaviour effected by parents?

Why?

Crime A Mental Health Issue.

A quarter of young people who end up in court may have been damaged by their mother's drinking during pregnancy - and should be treated differently, visiting experts say. Foetal alcohol kids 'require court rethink.'

After all, punishment has always been an ineffective means of correcting behaviour ... just ask parents, teachers, police and others involved in skills training. It is ironical that at this point in time, a time of the disempowerment of those people/services charged with teaching skills or effecting socially appropriate change, that our penal institutions shoud be named Departments of Corrections ... this doesn't quite reflect their reality.

Understatement.

Police are hunting for two men who sexually assaulted a young woman as she walked along the Porirua waterfront.

She was held from behind around her throat and neck while another man sexually assaulted her ... We know that incidents like this can cause community concern, as people should feel safe and be safe while enjoying recreational areas.

Predictable.

Killer's case manager was overloaded. The probation officer monitoring Graeme Burton after his prison release had too many high-risk offenders for one person to manage, a Corrections Department boss has admitted.

The inquest had earlier heard Burton was assessed by a clinical psychologist as being a veritable psychopath at moderate-to-high risk of violently reoffending ... who should not have been released.
Though he was implicated in three serious attacks on inmates and alleged to have offered a prisoner $8000 to do hits on two guards just months before his release, the Parole Board was not told this by prison staff.

All of the above was entirely predictible, as was the mayhem executed by Burton.

Abrogation of responsibility is a Public Service thing ... one could not expect less from quangos.

Aha, no one to blame.

Maybe the ABs need a woman's touch.

Reporter-cum-wannabe-All Blacks choreographer Beck Eleven applied for the position as coach on Monday. She was turned down yesterday.
And why, you may ask youself was she so emphatically rejected?
This sport is indeed in need of new blood, new ideas, new moves. The union says no, no, but reality already indicates a gender metamorphosis ... Nonu ... sometime ago ... eyeliner, and up and down ... up and down ... up and down a Wgn. lift, singing macho macho man as if trying to tell himself something. These strategies have a definite Graham Henry ring to them ... repetition, visualisation and self talk. But if this feminisation, this deference training, this absolute choreographed foreplay and of course necessary impeccable instructional control, for the All Blacks was orchestrated by Henry himself it is little wonder that his charges were hesitant, ambivalent and so obviously failed to reach those prescribed pinnacles ... with Henry, these requisites do not even hold 'face validity' ... after all a student cannot exceed the abilities of their teacher, and the 'art' of choreography has traditionally been more associated with dance than rugby ... so 'tis more properly a sheila thing ... and Henry, need we need reminding, does not approximate sheila, has failed as choreographer, has denied our elite sportspeople of that impromptu dance step... and has had his opportunity. He stated he would be judged on his world Cup Performance ... it was abysmal. The only reason he can be included in the final selection at present is as a means of not showing their previous support as being poorly founded ... and really, can NZ rugby really, really afford more grief counselling?
... Beck 11.
The ABs have already been touched by a woman.

Rudd does not have a big ego.

And a little ego is a big plus for maintaining a close transtasman relationship.

And as for Howard, In many ways he was without ego ... What bedevilled the Australia-New Zealand relationship in the past was often a lot of ego.

But the ego is there to moderate that hedonistic id and the overwhelming restrictions of the super ego ... so this is all a little difficult to comprehend.

Perhaps this is a close as Helen gets to the denigration of the person via the humming of the "Colonel Bogey March".