Prejudices and Crime

Today marks my five year anniversary working within the Department of Corrections, Probation and Psychological Services CPPS, one of the three sister government departments, made up of the Ministry of Justice and the New Zealand Police.

It feels more like 10 years.

And the day that I decided to leave the comfort of my couch to step out into the New Zealand public service workforce seems so long ago.

We had only been living in New Zealand for just under a year. We had a three year old and a four year old in pre-school and three young ones in Primary school.
The temptation to stay home and become a full time mother was very strong. Especially coming from eight years of journalism in Samoa (which also included four years of free lancing to CBS TV in America), a year in Parliament as Sub-Editor for Hansard Records (Parliamentary Debates and Legislation translations), a few months as Executive Media and Public Relations Manager for the Samoa Football Soccer Federation, whilst completing two years into a Law Degree via correspondence. Yes. I had just come from a very full on life. So the urge to stay home, and emerse myself into the life of a full time housewife and mother was a very welcomed delicious treat indeed.

But as much as I wanted to give myself a break and commit all of my time and energy to my children and my family, I knew that it would only take a few more months before I would hit the brakes. And hard too.

When you've had a passion for justice, empowering the helpless, contributing to a peaceful society and world, and giving voice to the voiceless, since you were just an eight year old (or so), it just doesn't go away.

It always manages to find its way back to you, one way or the other.

Whether it was in the form of the 6pm news highlighting a horrific crime, or a visit to the local social wellfare office where you find yourself sitting amongst hundreds of people all struggling to find employment, make ends meet, or even clearly abusing the system, or it was in a simple encounter with your child's school teacher over a case of bullying where your son or daughter was the victim, or reading of the social struggles of society versus government policies and politics. The passion for righting wrong in my daily environment, my immediate communities, and general society, would always find me.

I remember thinking that I could go back to journalism. The only problem was, I no longer found satisfaction there. I had completed four years in a daily newspaper, then a weekly paper, prior to going into television and radio for another four years. In small Samoa, with a vibrant but small media industry, there was very little room for anything else to move towards and that had me anxious. I am/was always seeking a challenge in everything I pursue in life. It can be my strength and enemy at the same time. Enemy in the sense, that the life span of my ability to focus on a specific area or field or project, is limited to a maximum of four years. So five years with Probation is quite an achievement for me.

It was a cold, windy, gloomy night.
The night when I was told to attend an information evening run by the Department as part of its recruitment for Probation Officers.

We had no baby sitters and very few family members who would be crazy enough to look after five bouncing children in a few hours.

So my husband took the night off from work (night shift) to drive me to the Otahuhu Service Centre for the event. We packed all the children into our seven seater and off we went. I went inside, while they drove around the block to keep the children occupied as they waited for me.

It was a packed room. I took a seat in the back, but was careful to make sure it wasn't too far back so the speakers would notice me. I took a moment to observe my surroundings. There were men and women of all ages and of all ethnicities. All dressed smart in their suits, shirts and pants. I felt so dully ordinary sitting next to the women especially. The speakers started to talk about what the role of a Probation Officer was all about. Management of community based sentences, completing pre-sentence reports outlining assessed sentencing recommendations for offenders to the Judges, assessing risks and likelihood of reoffending to ensure the safety of the general community at large, working with people to try and effect positive outcomes and motivation to turn their lives around, succeeding with Maori and Pasefika (who are over represented in the prison populations and crime statistics)means succeeding with the overall crime issues in New Zealand, the list was and still endlessly growing.

I was immediately hooked. They had me at keeping communities safe, and interventions to assist people to turn their lives around, by the time they reached Maori and Pasefika issues, I was sold hook, line and sinker.

They talked about the responsibilities that Probation Officers have to uphold in society, not only must they uphold the law, they must be seen to be doing so and they must role model morals and politically correct values and perceptions to the people that they work with. They also emphasized that the people we would be working with are often finding themselves at their lowest in life, and this can present a lot of challenges and obstacles. I was more than thrilled, me being the challenge thrill seeker that I am.

I was a little disheartened when the speakers advised they were only looking for 10 Probation Officers for the Manukau/Auckland region, and that they'd received well over 400 applications.

When I left the information evening that night, I had had my children (who were trying to get warm in the car's heater) pick me up, although I was a little less brave, their little faces gave me the push I needed to submit my application the next day.

Two weeks later my application had been shortlisted from 400 plus to a pool of 80plus applicants and we were to attend a Psychometric test and report writing round, which would enable the recruiters to short list a pool for the panel interviews.

I attended the tests at the Manurewa office and I remember waiting in the foyer with a well dressed caucasian lady who appeared to be 10 years my senior (I was 27 years old at the time). She showed me her CV, she was an AUT Criminologist graduate, wanting some intensive challenges. She was pleasant enough, but the more she talked of her degree and experience, the more I felt my palms sweating. A few minutes later, two other applicants had joined us, one was a lawyer by profession, another a Psychologist. I started to wonder, what on earth was I doing there?

Cut the long story short, I killed the Psychometric test despite its tight timeframes, and sent a thankful prayer to God for my journalism years which gave me so much writing practise, that helped with the report writing test. Two weeks after that, I found myself sitting in front of a panel of five, made up of three managers, and two prestigious members of the Community - Maori kaumatua. I remember pouring my heart out to them around my passions in life, the values and morals that I wanted for myself and what kind of society I want to contribute to and why.

I remember I was so very passionate about working for 'my people' (no I'm not the Queen of Samoa). I wanted to make a difference in the lives of Samoans who had found themselves at the wrong end of the law, and that I would help them change their lives for the better and get them to see their errors and I would inspire them to change for good. I would contribute to improving the tarnished reputation of our people where crime is concerned in New Zealand. I was hugely determined and confident that I Josephine Nickel was born to make the world a better and safer place.

Your dreams are always bold and great when you're younger right?

After five years, I look back and think 'how very over optimistic and so limited my hopes were then'. Furthermore, my world was so narrow and so small, despite all the worldly experience that I had exposed myself to, through studying, reading and through journalism. My world was still so small, only focussing on helping Samoans. One year into Probation, it went from just Samoans to Maori and Pacific Islanders.

Today, I thank my widescope nature of a role, for teaching me to expand my world more.

Today, I have a new understanding, that by limiting my focus on Pacific Islanders and Samoans only, I was being prejudiced and selective to whom I can help through my role.

New Zealand is a multi-cultural/ethnical contemporary society. It's present day successes is result of the contribution of all the ethnicities that make up her colorful rich history and culture.

In order to succeed in eliminating and reducing crime in New Zealand overall, I have come to learn that we must work for the collective communities.

Yes, the Pacific Islands and Maori communities are more fragile, and predisposed to crime, mental health, financial struggles, and poverty, but so are other less privileged groups or class of people in other ethnicities.

We cannot let our identity limit our outreach to society and cloud our passion for people.

That is the bottom line of my passion.

People.

It took me five years to learn this through my work within the general community.

My passion is to make a difference in the lives of ALL human beings, ALL people, regardless of race, ethnicity, age, sex, sexualities, religion, class, ALL people make up our modern societies.

People are people. We all feel pain, disappointment, and sorrow. We all feel joy, happiness, and love. We all have a common desire in life, that is, simply to live life.

Five years later, experience is a hard teacher.

I have learned that I can have all the passion, motivation and inspiration to change the world and change people, all I want, but if people reject that help, there is only so much you can do.

I have learned that crime is a part of life.

Just as there is right from wrong, peace and destruction, violence and harmony, black and white, there will always be crime.

Without it, life as we know it will be non-existent.

We can only do our very best within the eight hours a day that we are given to do what we can do, to contribute to our government's policies and vision for our whole country and ALL New Zealanders.

Our best is all we can give and it should be enough. So today, I celebrate five years of serving New Zealand and ALL its communities by contributing to upholding her citizens' wishes to be safe, and to keep people's faith in her justice systems.

I have come from my years of being a new kid on the block, to expanding my knowledge of our core business and operations, and branching into facilitation roles training practitioners to be more confident in working with PI (still got to do something that's focussing on PI people), and other required skills, to netowrking and liaison with community agencies and other Government departments that we work alongside with, which all contribute to the wider vision of reducing crime in New Zealand.

Sometimes you find yourself winning and sometimes it feels like a continuous losing battle. But like I said, you learn to appreciate all your victories, no matter how little or great. Because in the business of crime management, you quickly learn that over expectations, is a barrier to success at times.

It's a wonderful role/job career path that can branch into many different areas, such as facilitation, programme delivery (counselling/treatment programmes), management, practise leadership roles, and so much more. I highly recommend it to anyone who's keen on making a difference with people who are often at their lowest in life and society. You will often find more disappointments than joys (where people's apprehension to change is concerned), which is why you have to have the right passions and mind sets to find satisfaction in the role. It's not your ordinary nine to five desk job. There is never a single day that will ever be the same. There is never a dull moment, nor is there a quiet stroll in the park one, but the opportunities to really literally create 'hands on' change and differences in someone's life?

PRICELESS.

Everytime someone thanks me for helping them turn their lives around, or make the right choices for themselves and their families, the pure joy I get from their success, assures me that I am exactly where God wants me to be at this point and time in my journey.