Judge Frederick William Monteith McElrea has served since 1988, exercising both criminal and civil jurisdiction.  He has also received appointments as a Youth Court Judge, 1990-2001, and as an Alternate Environment Judge since 2001.   In 2004, Fred served as an additional Justice of the Supreme Court of Tonga for three months.

Prior to becoming a judge, Fred practised civil litigation for 18 years as a partner in an Auckland law firm.  Fred has lectured part-time in Criminal Law / Advanced Criminal Law and in Civil Procedure at the University of Auckland. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Institute of Criminology, in Cambridge, England.  Fred’s academic degrees include an M.A. (1st class Hons in Philosophy) Otago, LL.M. London, and a Diploma in Criminology from Cambridge.

Fred has held a variety of other appointments, including:

• Founding member of the Board of Directors of International Corrections and Prisons Association for the Advancement of Professional Corrections
• Member of the New Zealand Council of Legal Education
• Council member of the Legal Research Foundation
• Chairman of the Representation Commission (an independent statutory body responsible for redrawing New Zealand's electoral boundaries for two elections)
• Chairman of the Executive of the Auckland City Mission, an Anglican charitable trust

Fred has had an interest in restorative justice since 1990 when he first became a Youth Court Judge and experienced the different way in which that Court operated compared to the adult courts.  This led to his writing a paper on that topic for the Legal Research Foundation in 1992 and spending a month of his sabbatical leave in 1993 working on the topic of restorative justice at the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University, England. 

Back in New Zealand, in 1994 he proposed the introduction of Community Group Conferences for adults.  This led to the formation of several voluntary groups providing RJ services to the courts, and later to the Department for Courts’ pilot scheme in four District Courts. 

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Restorative justice is a wonderful message of hope to academics, practitioners and a public who alike had become dispirited, weary and wary. Visitors to New Zealand frequently comment on the obvious enthusiasm of its youth justice practitioners, despite the lack of resources and other problems that often dog their progress.  Part of this hopefulness lies in our experience of breaking some of the stereotypes that permeate criminal justice.

In the Australian RISE research, conferences were seen as fairer than courts by both victims and offenders. In New Zealand, Police Youth Aid officers are involved in conferences as constructive, helpful participants. Everywhere victims are regularly found not to be vengeful people demanding their pound of flesh. Lawyers are well capable of playing non-adversarial roles. Judges can be enablers and servants. What a breath of fresh air it is to be free of those rusty old shackles, to be hopeful, to be inspired by the prospect of a better way of doing justice.

(from “Restorative Justice - A New Zealand Perspective”, London, 16-20 June 2002)

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Since 1994 Fred has made various proposals for the implementation of RJ principles and delivered some 20 or more papers on the topic for conferences in 10 countries.  In New Zealand he has taken a judicial lead in applying the restorative justice provisions of the Sentencing Act 2002 to adults, integrating those provisions with traditional sentencing principles, and developing the restorative justice jurisprudence in environmental offending.

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Reach FWM McElrea at judgemcelrea@courts.govt.nz

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