At 8am on December 8, 2001, William Dwane Bell entered the Mt Wellington-Panmure RSA’s restaurant and bar in east Auckland. He carried a shotgun and wore a stab-proof shirt and once inside he killed three people, shooting one and bludgeoning the others to death. He beat a fourth victim so severely he left her with profound permanent injuries.
Bell was 23. When he was arrested and charged, it emerged that he had more than 100 criminal convictions. He was on parole after serving a five-year sentence for aggravated robbery but none of the conditions of his parole had been met. His probation officer failed to supervise him, he’d recently committed other robberies and the police had been notified but ignored the complaints.
The RSA triple murder was a media sensation and it was quickly politicised. How could someone so dangerous be released into the community? What was wrong with the parole board? The probation office? The police? The entire criminal justice system? Didn’t the government have blood on its hands? What were they doing to protect New Zealanders from violent crime?
The Helen Clark-led Labour government of the early 2000s was tough on crime. Over its nine-year term it built four new prisons. In 2002, then justice minister Phil Goff strengthened New Zealand’s sentencing and parole laws, suggesting they’d prevent Bell from ever receiving parole. After they came into effect New Zealand’s prison population per capita – which had been steady for many years – began to rise.
For criminologists and advocates for justice reform, this sequence – sensational crime, saturation media coverage, frantic political response – epitomises everything that’s wrong with the justice system. When news coverage focuses on shocking, atypical crimes it frightens the public and pressures politicians to reassure them. So the result is a system built around political opportunism which does nothing to rehabilitate offenders or reduce crime.
