"Skewed"

According to the Dominion-Post this morning, there is "concern" over the increased number of retirees and beneficiaries serving on juries. Since the 1999 law change which allowed over-65-year-olds to be selected, their numbers have "skyrocketed" to 3000 a year. Meanwhile the number of beneficiaries has reportedly tripled to 700 a year. And according to Philip Morgan, a Hamilton-based QC, such "skewed numbers" are "reducing the pool of available common sense".

The first point is that the latter comment is nothing but snobbery on Morgan's part. There's no evidence whatsoever that the poor or the old are any less endowed with "common sense" or the ability to judge facts than anybody else. I'm sure it makes perfect sense to a lawyer on a high salary, but from here it looks like Morgan is indulging in the same sort of bigoted mythology which has caused aristocrats throughout the ages to pooh-pooh democracy on the grounds that the poor couldn't possibly know how to run a country.

The second point is that the numbers aren't "skewed" - or at least, not in the way Morgan thinks. Juries are drawn from the electoral roll, which gives a total pool of about 3 million eligible jurors. There are around half a million pensioners, so you'd expect around one juror in six to be over 65. Instead, we find the rate of participation is only half that - 3,000 out of around 36,000. It's a similar story with beneficiaries - there are around 300,000 "working-age" beneficiaries according to Don Brash, so if they were properly represented, one juror in ten should be on a benefit. Instead, it's less than one in fifty. Whichever way you look at it, these groups are woefully underrepresented in juries - not over-represented as Morgan claims.

Pensioners and beneficiaries are part of the commuity, and thus deserve to be representd in our justice system. The problem isn't that there are too many of them, but that there aren't enough. Perhaps Morgan should actually do the maths next time before opening his mouth..?