Campaign to save law camp

An Otago student has started a campaign to save a controversial camp for second-year law students.

The student-organised camp has been the subject of allegations of inappropriate behaviour and peer pressure during its 10-year run, and was this week scrapped by the university.

Second-year student Mhairi Mackenzie Everitt has now started a petition to have the camp reinstated.

At the time of writing it had surpassed its goal of 500 signatures.

Mackenzie Everitt said some of the allegations shocked her and her fellow second-years, who were planning on attending the camp this weekend. The camp was intended to be a bonding experience for second-years, and a reward for making the cut.

Everitt said the law students she knows have all been “incredibly frustrated” with the media coverage of the story.

“One of the points that has angered us second-years the most is the media’s continual obsession with sensationalised stories of debauchery at Otago.”

She said the camp may have been flawed, but its purpose was genuine.

Abolition of prisons the aim

Maori legal scholar Moana Jackson says ways to fix New Zealand’s increasing imprisonment rate were set out 30 years ago, and he’s keen to test those ideas again.

Jackson has a grant for legal research and education to update his 1987 He Whaipaanga Hou report on Maori and the criminal justice system.

Since that report was shelved the number of Maori in prison has increased, and wahine Maori have gone from less than 10 per cent of the female prison population to more than 50 per cent.

He says rather than go ahead with the proposed new mega-prison, the government could take a leaf out of the 1989 Te Ara Hou report by Sir Clinton Roper about the prison system.

“He talked about needing to move away from prisons to what he called habilitation centres. We talked at that time about something similar where you could find a smaller, whanau-centered place close to home for those who have done harm and I think it is time to revisit those debates as part of a gradual move to what other countries are beginning to do and that is look at the abolition eventually of prisons,” Jackson said.