A/Prof. Marta Rychert1
1Massey University, Aotearoa / New Zealand
Biography:
Marta Rychert is an Associate Professor in the College of Health at Massey University and a New Zealand Royal Society Rutherford Discovery Fellow. Her research sits at the intersection of health, public policy and law, with particular focus on professional misconduct and public policy responses to drugs. She is an Associate Investigator on the NZ Royal Society-funded project examining the rehabilitation of regulated professionals following misconduct, led by Prof Diesfeld and Prof Surgenor. She serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Drugs, Habits and Social Policy.
Abstract:
Professional disciplinary tribunals frequently justify their decisions by reference to maintaining public confidence in the professions, yet little attention has been paid to what "public confidence" entails or how it is constructed. Drawing on secondary analysis of decisions from lawyers’ and health practitioners’ disciplinary tribunals, and a focus group with members of three disciplinary tribunals in Aotearoa New Zealand, this presentation examines how tribunals construct “public confidence” when justifying disciplinary outcomes.
Our analysis suggests three overlapping dimensions through which tribunals seek to maintain public confidence. First, public confidence is linked to condemnation of wrongdoing, affirming professional standards and signalling that misconduct is taken seriously. Second, it is associated with protecting the public by restricting unsafe practitioners from practice and, in some cases, through rehabilitative sanctions intended to support safe practice. However, focus group participants expressed differing views about rehabilitation: some viewed it as in tension with the protective function, while others regarded rehabilitation as a means of achieving public protection. Third, public confidence is associated with procedural fairness, whereby transparent and impartial decision-making demonstrates the legitimacy of the disciplinary process itself. Lay tribunal members, described as the "voice of the public", reinforced this dimension by bringing community perspectives into deliberations.
Our findings suggest that public confidence is not a singular objective but a multidimensional concept encompassing distinct and sometimes competing understandings of the purposes of discipline. Tribunals draw on multiple dimensions simultaneously, producing hybrid disciplinary responses that seek to condemn wrongdoing, protect the public, support rehabilitation, and promote fair process.