Clendon David: Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8155. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 The Greens will be opposing the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. 
David Garrett 
: There’s a surprise! 
DAVID CLENDON 
: I say to Mr Garrett that I like to be predictable. This bill allows the Department of Corrections to jail prisoners in court cells. Currently this can be done by providing notices in the  
Gazette 
 but this would usually require approval under the Resource Management Act. This bill establishes an exception so the Resource Management Act does not cover the housing of prisoners in court cells. We know that court cells are not designed or suitable for the long-term housing of prisoners. It is flagged in the regulatory impact statement to this bill that the completely inadequate nature of these facilities means that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is potentially contravened as indeed could some relevant international conventions. 
Last night there was mention of innovation and vision in changes to corrections more generally and specifically in the terms of the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill that was discussed last night. The vision that underpins this current bill seems to be that we will continue to imprison people in large numbers we will not make any attempt to reduce the number of prisoners and we will simply use whatever expedient measure we can to put people away to keep them out of the public view and to make no effort to rehabilitate them or to reduce or deal with the underlying causes of crime. We have heard of shipping containers being used as cells and now we have court cells. I can only surmise as to the opinion of the police force when discovering that their holding cells which are there for a very real and proper purpose are now to be used to manage the lack of other adequate facilities for maintaining prisoner security and indeed public safety. 
We know that the prison system is under extraordinary pressure and again I refer to the presentation yesterday to the Law and Order Committee from the head of the Department of Corrections who indicated quite clearly and frankly that the department is under extraordinary stress and is very close to breaking point. Double-bunking is seen as one mechanism for reducing or managing the pressure on prisons but we know from prison officers that it puts them in an extremely vulnerable very dangerous and potentially very violent situation which will be dangerous both for them and for inmates. 
The option of last resort is this one that seems to have been chosen—the idea of using court cells to accommodate the overflow. It has been used in the past as I said for acute accommodation shortages in the very short term. But this bill would embed and normalise the practice of putting prisoners into court cells which is completely inadequate and is not acceptable in a modern allegedly developed society. 
The objective of the policy as stated in the regulatory impact statement is to enable the Department of Corrections to continue to manage the prison population within the available resource and in a manner that is safe secure humane and effective. We argue that this bill fails those tests. It will not enhance safety. Court cells are not secure in the sense that they are not designed for the long-term custody of prisoners. It certainly is not humane to put people in a situation where there are no facilities for adequate exercise or for access from visitors or indeed for proper legal representation and we do not believe it would be effective. 
This bill in part is intended to circumvent the requirements of section 9 of the Resource Management Act. The disadvantage of the proposal is that it prevents or would prevent neighbouring residents and other affected parties from challenging the overnight accommodation of prisoners in court cells. An understatement in the regulatory impact statement suggests that the legislation could be controversial. To say the least it will most certainly be controversial; the Resource Management Act is a document that has already been under attack this year and we expect there will be further attacks next year. Specifically the Greens defend the Resource Management Act on the grounds that it is our primary source of environmental protection and we absolutely will continue to defend the principle of public participation. 
This bill endeavours to circumvent the opportunity for members of the public to participate effectively through the sections and provisions of the bill. Granting an exemption from the Resource Management Act requirements also sets a very unhealthy precedent that could be taken up by others who see that there may be advantage in a Government agency seeking to carry out urgent building work for example or other activities with an environmental or social impact. The bill could be seen as a precedent to pursue similar exemptions. 
The comment has been made that using court cells for overflow might carry a risk of litigation. The prisoners housed in these cells could claim that their treatment does not comply with the provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Indeed one can readily imagine situations where prisoners would be quite right in that assertion in that their rights would in fact be contravened. It is acknowledged that the use of court cells for overflow prisoners is not a new policy. Court cells have been used in the past and the department was able to meet its obligations under domestic and international law. However that was always in the sense of exceptional circumstance—a temporary one-off seldom repeated situation. As I said this bill would seek to normalise the use of court cells as overflow with all of the accompanying indications that people will continue to offend we will continue to provide inadequate treatment rehabilitation services or even proper and decent accommodation and therefore we will use this stopgap measure. Except rather than have it as a stopgap measure it will become a core part of our corrections system. 
We need to put our efforts—significant efforts and indeed significant resources—into reducing our prison population. We need non-custodial intervention for minor non-violent offending instead of the default position of throwing young people into the schools of crime that our prisons are. We need a much greater focus on early intervention rehabilitation and adult and community education. Such a large number of our prison population have literacy and numeracy problems and community-based education is a very powerful mechanism for remedying that very real problem. It is very unfortunate that this Government has chosen to reduce adult and community education funding at a time when it is of critical importance and could make a major albeit indirect contribution to reducing our prison population. 
There is a need to address the causes of crime such as entrenched poverty which is becoming endemic in this country despite it being a wealthy—or at least potentially a wealthy—country. The evidence this week that something like one in five children in our country is effectively living in poverty is simply intolerable. The children of those homes the children of those families will almost inevitably become a high risk in their time and that is virtually guaranteeing another generation of offending. I have mentioned in previous speeches the ever-widening income gap in New Zealand. We will have more and more people with very little to lose and a few with far too much to lose. Again this is not a mechanism for social harmony or well-being. It will increase the risk of offending. 
Given that this bill was not available to us until quite recently these are only very preliminary comments but I can assure the House that we will continue to oppose this bill throughout its passage. Kia ora.