The Glenn Inquiry blows whatever credibility it had left

When Sir Owen Glenn announced in 2012 that he was pouring $2 million into an independent inquiry in child abuse and domestic violence, there was a mixed reaction. Negative reaction focussed largely on whether the inquiry would be truly independent, with concerns that Sir Owen, as wielder of the purse strings, would have too large an influence over the inquiry’s methodology and conclusions. When the inquiry’s executive director Ruth Herbert and operations director Jessica Trask resigned in May 2013, citing a “breakdown in the relationship” with Sir Owen, those concerns seemed well-founded. Now, the latest debacle involves the inquiry’s figures regarding the cost of domestic violence. The NZ Herald reports:

A report by economist Suzanne Snively and Wellington theatre student Sherilee Kahui, published by the inquiry yesterday, said family violence cost New Zealand between $4.1 billion and $7 billion a year – up from Ms Snively’s last estimate in 1994 of just $1 billion. But the higher figure of $7 billion was based on a claim that 23.6 per cent of women born in Christchurch in 1977 suffered intimate partner violence in the year leading up to interviews when they were 25 in about 2002. That figure in the original paper published in 2005 by the Christchurch Health and Development Study actually refers to the number of men as well as women who scored 3 or 4 points on a violence victimisation scale for intimate partner violence. Two-thirds of people in the study scored below 3 points and 9.4 per cent scored above 4 points. Those scoring 3 or 4 points were described in the original paper as “predominantly a group of individuals reporting frequent minor psychological aggression and occasionally severe psychological aggression”, but “none reported any of the signs of severe domestic violence [injury or fearfulness]”.

The $7 billion figure was a late addition to the study, which initially contained only a “low-end” estimate of $4.1 billion and a “moderate scenario” of $4.5 billion. So what was the justification given for suddenly messing with the numbers? Well, according to the Herald:

The high-end estimate was added after experts in Auckland and Wellington said they believed the true domestic violence victimisation rates were higher than the “moderate scenario” rates of 18.2 per cent for women and 1.9 per cent for men. “We were struggling to find empirical evidence of an estimate that would be higher than 18.2 per cent,” Ms Kahui said. “So it was about finding something higher.”

Really? The experts didn’t like the data they had, so they went looking for anything that would better suit the conclusion they wanted to reach? And when they found a different study, they misinterpreted it, but didn’t notice they’d made a mistake, because their mistake matched their gut feeling prejudices?

Which is a great pity, because the “low-end” and “moderate scenario” figures of $4.1 and $4.5 billion were already large numbers, which should surely be of concern to any public policy-maker.

Unfortunately though, when researchers have already admitted essentially massaging the data to fit what their in-built biases consider the numbers should have looked like, it certainly raises questions about any subsequent conclusions they might draw.

Trust NZ Police crime stats? Sure can’t…

The Herald on Sunday has revealed this morning that between 2009 and 2012, 700 instances of burglary offending in Counties Manukau were incorrectly “recoded”, recorded instead as more minor crimes, such as theft or wilful damage, or as “incidents”, which aren’t counted in the crime statistics at all.

The Independent Police Conduct Authority has completed a review into the recording of burglary offending in Counties Manukau, and has concluded that burglaries were recoded at a rate of 15% to 30% between 2009 and 2012 in Counties Manukau south, in comparison to a rate of about 5% in other areas.

Anne Tolley says there was no pressure from the Government to fudge the statistics. I’d note that pressure does not have to be overt for it to still occur.

However, the problem does not appear to have been in relation to even the whole of Counties Manukau district; instead it was confined to Counties Manukau south. And the Herald article points plainly to why the recoding likely occurred and where a large degree of the pressure likely came from.

Counties Manukau and Gisborne are the country’s burglary capitals, and in February 2010 Counties Manukau south received a new area commander, Gary Hill, who declared that his key priority was cutting burglary statistics. When the recoding was discovered, five police staff were sanctioned, including area commander Hill. It doesn’t take a genius to presume that an ambitious new area commander might well have shoulder-tapped a few loyal staff and given a wink and a nudge to the effect that downplaying of burglar reporting would be smiled upon.

Police deny that it was systematic. Although five staff were sanctioned, two internal police inquiries “found staff had simply failed to follow national guidelines for burglary coding”.

Whether it was systematic or not, is a little beside the point. As Labour’s police spokeswoman, Jacinda Ardern, points out in the Herald article:

[Ms] Ardern said it was an “incredibly damning” insight into how the crime statistics could be altered to match a certain agenda. “Political targets skew behaviour. In this case, the integrity of the crime statistics in that area have been seriously undermined.

You have to ask, does recoding or other statistical minimisation occur in other areas, such as domestic violence reporting? When police attend a domestic violence callout, is there pressure to hand out a basic warning or issue a Police Safety Order, rather than make an arrest and lay a criminal charge? Sometimes use of warnings or PSOs is good policing – intervention before a domestic situation escalates to the level of criminality; however, over-use of such tools can result in the minimisation of domestic violence in crime reporting.

The result of the fiddling of the burglary stats by certain Counties Manukau south staff means that a more cynical look is needed when politically hot types of crime suffer sudden falls. Those five police staff members have done police no favours.

Being a man, and not being sorry

David Cunliffe’s speech to a Women’s Refuge symposium, where he apologised for being a man, has certainly created a storm of discussion. Which is good, because Mr Cunliffe was absolutely right when he said that “family and sexual violence is perpetrated overwhelmingly by men against women and children”.

As a criminal and family lawyer, I see far too many examples of domestic violence offending in any given week. For some of those offenders, suffering the public spotlight of being dragged through the Court system is enough to provoke a change. For others, being sentenced to a rehabilitative sentence involving stopping violence, anger management or drug and counselling is the key.

Unfortunately, there are always a proportion of offenders that the Court system simply cannot change. They’ve done their counselling (attending simply because they had to, with nothing sinking in), they’ve worked their way through the hierarchy of punitive sentences, and even when a Judge gives them a final warning – telling them that if they come back again on another Male Assaults Female charge, they’re going to jail – they’ll still be back. For these offenders, there’s often a huge sense of entitlement and the blaming of everyone but themselves for their situation. They’re not sorry for the victim; they’re sorry they’re in custody.

Stopping domestic violence is a complicated task. Too many factors feed in to violent behaviour, so there’s no silver bullet. Which is why it’s good that both of our main political parties are concerned about the issue. Which party has the best approach is a question I leave to another day.

That said, David Cunliffe’s apology for being a man was not smart politics. It may have played well to the Labour Left, who embrace identity politics and see “rape culture” as a fact not a concept. However, as Bryce Edwards said on the Nation this weekend, there’s a wide divide between the Labour Left and so-called Middle New Zealand, who will simply have nodded as John Key said:

“It’s a pretty silly comment from David Cunliffe. The problem isn’t being a man, the problem is if you’re an abusive man. I think it’s a bit insulting to imply that all men are abusive. A small group are, and they need to change their behaviour and be held to account.”

I’m with John Key on this one. I don’t have to be sorry that I’m a man in order to recognise that this country has a problem with domestic violence. Just as I don’t have to be sorry I’m white in order to recognise that Maori have legitimate historic (and not so historic) grievances that should be settled.

As Tim Watkins writes:

[T]o start by saying he’s sorry to be a man at that moment is sloppy politics and lazy thinking. It takes Labour back into the identity politics territory that isn’t what swing voters want them talking about.

But worse for me is that it’s just plain dumb. He’s stereotyping men in a way he never would women, Maori, gays, immigrants or any other section of society. And he’s fallen into the trap of effectively saying ‘all cats have paws, therefore every animal with paws is a cat’. Being a man is not the problem per se; it’s what you do with it that counts.

Sure, problem of violence is, in part, tied up with gender — with testosterone and cultural norms playing their role.

But don’t apologise for simply being randomly born one gender rather than the other. Don’t imply a man’s mere gender makes him violent. Don’t simplify a complex issue. And don’t make lazy generalisations.