Borrows Chester: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Borrows Chester: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:4349] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I have been knocking around prisons for a while now and have been in and out of jail for about 30 years and thankfully it has been my choice to come and go. But over that time I have come to know a bit about inmates and I have put my fair share behind bars and done my fair share in preventing some from getting there. I have been in jails as a visitor a cop and a lawyer. I have represented inmates in prison hearings and in courthouses and on occasions I have had them out for the day and taken them home for lunch. So as fast as I am being pushed in one pigeon-hole by the other side of the Chamber I am doing my best to struggle out of it. I reckon that although I have a lot to learn about criminals and offending I think I have my head around a lot of things that set some people on the road to a life of crime. 
The Sentencing Act 2002 in respect of the purposes of sentencing is about denunciation and deterrence protection of the community rehabilitation and holding the offender to account for the harm done. The golden thread of custodial sentences must be “they’ve got to come out better than they went in”. My criticism of the Government is that in respect of this golden thread it has been an abject failure. In 1999 I took a group of National Party members to Kaitoke prison especially to look at the enterprise schemes operating within the prison. One of the schemes we looked at was a shoe factory. The shoe factory employed about 100 inmates a year and almost all of them had never worked before. Anecdotally the supervisors told me that they had never had one of their shoe factory inmates back on a custodial sentence. At the time the cost was about $55000 a year to keep an inmate in jail; the shoe factory prevented those people from reoffending. One could argue it saved New Zealand over $5 million a year. With expected recidivist rates it saved at least $3.5 million in any event but the contract ended and in 2002 the Labour Government decided not to renew it because the scheme did not make a profit. 
About 6 weeks ago I attended a Sycamore Project graduation in a prison. I have attended two such programmes which are marvellous for addressing the restorative element essential in turning an offender’s life round. I was talking to a man who was doing his first prison sentence. I understand it was for his first crime and it was for a serious offence obviously—a drug offence. He had heard the cell door slam behind him and knew straight away that he had stuffed up big time: that he had failed his family and those who cared about him and would be spending at least another 6 years in jail. He was a drug dealer and I have no sympathy for him or his kind. I do not believe that drug offences are victimless crimes and we need to deal swiftly and harshly with them to expedite the purposes of sentencing as I have already laid them out. But that man who wants to change his ways and wants to get off the drugs needs help to stay clean even in jail. But he cannot get on a drug programme until he has done two-thirds of his 8-year sentence. He needs help right now but he cannot access it. So 44 beds for 7600 prisoners 83 percent of whom have drug and alcohol problems is not going to cut it. Temptation is everywhere even in jail. But this Government withholds any assistance for another 4 years. 
What is more we know that almost every one of those offenders has multiple problems and multiple needs. They cannot read or write. They abuse substances and/or have big violence problems or sexual and physical abuse histories and frequently beat the hell out of women and children or have the hell beaten out of them. 
With prisoners it is not a chicken-and-egg quandary—we know which comes first. We know that violence begets violence and that the sexually abused become sexual abusers. We know that children of alcoholics and drug addicts breed children dependent on alcohol and drugs. Yet under this Government the treatment is withheld for no good reason other than that it is not a sufficient priority. We should get people into jail if jail is where they need to go and turn some lives round. One day we will see prisons shut for the want of inmates because people really will come out better than when they went in. We know that it will not happen overnight and it is not rocket science but it just has to happen.