Building Tolerance and Impunity for State Violence

• In Event: New Perspectives on Crime and Justice

Abstract

In 2019, the New Zealand government established a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. Emerging out of significant survivor and advocate campaigning, the Commission has been tasked with investigating the abuse and neglect of children, young people and vulnerable adults in Aotearoa/New Zealand between 1950 and 1999. So far, the public hearings, witness statements and interim reports have charted horrific violence by state and faith-based workers including torture, sexual assaults, serious physical violence and layers of neglect and discrimination. Māori have been especially targeted as victims of abuse and harms. This paper considers how state agencies have navigated Commission hearings to reassert institutional legitimacy. In particular, it explores how rights narratives, technologies and bureaucratic layers operate to obscure victimhood and trauma, sustain criminalization and reassert state impunity.

Author

• Elizabeth Stanley, Victoria University Wellington