Hendrix Hauwai, 17, was on bail for previous attacks on women.

New Zealand’s bail laws are in desperate need of revision, are as it’s kid-glove treatment of young offenders who brutalize women.

Today we learned that the young thug who punched an Auckland mother in the back of the head, shattering her skull, was on bail for a similar offence committed five days previously.

At a sentencing hearing…

a teenager has been sentenced to almost five years in prison for assaulting Good Samaritan Lucy Knight as she tried to intervene during a bag snatch.

Hendrix Hauwai, 17, pleaded guilty last year to aggravated wounding and assault with intent to rob, in the attack outside an Auckland supermarket that left Ms Knight fighting for her life in hospital.

After restrictions were lifted…

 it emerged that Hauwai punched mother-of-six Ms Knight in the back of the head as she tried to stop him stealing a handbag from a Chinese woman. The blow sent her to the ground, fracturing her skull.

Hauwai was on bail at the time of the incident for another handbag snatch carried out five days previously…in which he kicked and punched a woman in the head as she lay on the street, Crown counsel Brian Dickey said.

The next day, September 18, he snatched a Louis Vuitton handbag from a woman in East Tamaki’s Chinatown area…

Meanwhile, an Auckland  woman who robbed women in their 90s and 90s -, some of them while she was on bail for similar offences – has been given a reduction in her prison sentence and may be eligible for home detention…

Milly Tevina Kalauni was sentenced to 10 months jail in relation to five charges of theft, two of possession of cannabis and one of possession of a pipe for methamphetamine.

The court heard that her victims included:

a 91-year-old woman who let Kalauni into her house on the pretence that Kalauni needed to use the bathroom. She stole the woman’s wallet;

an 88-year-old woman who befriended Kalauni and let her into her home. Kalauni took money from her wallet;

a 93-year-old woman. Kalauni knocked on her door, asked for some “personal female items”, was invited in and then took $500 in cash;

a 74-year-old woman living with her 87-year-old husband. Kalauni, who had one of her children with her, asked to use the bathroom as she was “having some female problems”. She took $220 from the woman’s purse and $35 from her husband’s wallet.

While on bail for these offences, she persuaded a 93-year-old woman to let her into her house and took cash from her.

Kalauni appealed her sentence to the High Court on the basis that the judge imposed too great an uplift in relation to her prior offending.

In his decision, Justice Christian Whata said Kalauni’s trial had heard her previous record included “no less than 38 burglaries or dishonesty offences“, and the sentencing judge had described her as a “prolific and dishonest offender“… source

There are approximately 29,500 offenders serving community-based sentences and orders in New Zealand. 7,203 of them are serving a sentence of supervision, 2,379 intensive supervision, and 226 extended supervision

In May last year an alleged repeat offender was charged with the murder (and was later charged with rape) of Blessinda Gotingo. The man, age 27, was reportedly under supervision. He was known to police at the time of the random attack, which took place as Blessinda travelled between home and work one evening in North Shore, Auckland.

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