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For all the Sams we’ve failed before

Andrew Gunn Christchurch-based film and television scriptwriter, and columnist

Spare a thought for Sam Uffindell. The system has failed him. And in a way, we are all to blame. Picture now that callow impressionable 16-year-old. Finding himself running with, well, not a bad crowd but just a bunch of boys who will be boys, Sam and his mates beat up a frightened 13-year-old cowering in his bed. There are no knives or gang patches involved, you understand. These are young gentlemen who prefer the simple honest heft of a co-opted wooden bed leg.

Found out, Sam is asked to leave his prestigious boys’ school, because being expelled would obviously be A Bad Look For Everyone. Cast adrift, he washes up at, er, another prestigious boys’ school. From this bleak purgatory there is only one hard-scrabble pathway forward: a stint of drinking and unprosecuted marijuana use at Otago Uni, followed by a career in banking and a seat in Parliament.

But it didn’t have to be like this for Sam. If it weren’t for the colour of his skin and his socio-economic status, he could have had a real chance. A chance to atone for this early foolish mistake. A mistake that, when you think about it, any of us with a hankering to assault smaller children could easily have made. He could have had a chance to make it right, to exorcise the demons that apparently have troubled him these past 22 (or 10, or however many) years, and to move on.

Yes, if only the dice of life had fallen in Sam’s favour, things could have been so different. A knock on the door from a friendly police officer, a ride to the station, the reading to him of his rights and the opportunity to attend Youth Court and have the whole thing laid bare and dealt with then and there. The opportunity that so many impoverished brown youths are so often freely given.

But an opportunity that was sadly and cruelly denied to Sam.

In a family group conference Sam could have faced his victim and heard him describe the trauma he had gone through. He could have faced the victim’s family, too, and witnessed their upset.

In his turn he could have tried to explain what the hell he thought he was doing that night.

They have fallen through the cracks, only to be scooped up into the safety net of privilege and gently deposited onto the escalator to worldly success.

Supported by his own family he might, if he so wished, have demonstrated empathy and true remorse.

In the end some kind of resolution might have been achieved.

For the victim, a degree of satisfaction at a wrong righted, and the feeling of being seen and heard.

For Sam, an unburdening and a clear-eyed vision of how to live his life from now on.

Or the whole thing could have turned to custard and a slow spiral into a life of crime. Who’s to know?

We certainly won’t, because none of this was made available to the future MP for Tauranga. Statistically this is just not the pathway for good white boys from good middle-class families. And why should it be? They are not thugs. They are not violent youths who need to be cracked down on.

They never need to feel the sting of being told, in the words of one very recent MP (who was he again?) that they are part of a ‘culture of lawlessness’.

Or that they have a ‘lack of accountability’ and a ‘sense of impunity’.

No, they have simply made a silly mistake and deserve a second chance, and possibly a third. And fourth.

Yes, the system has failed Sam Uffindell.

And yet, by great good fortune he may still have the opportunity to redeem himself. Certainly, for example, there are plenty of opportunities in the charitable sector.

But what of all the other Sams out there, who unlike this one will never be called to account? Who will forever live the unexamined life. Who will always be shielded from facing the consequences of their actions. The system has failed them too. They have fallen through the cracks, only to be scooped up into the safety net of privilege and gently deposited onto the escalator to worldly success.

In all probability, they will never look back.

They will never have that chance to contemplate the carnage they leave behind them.

Spare a thought for them too. Those poor, poor, bastards.

Mainlander | Opinion

en-nz

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282321093784229

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