Franks Stephen: Corrections Bill — Second Reading 
Franks Stephen: Corrections Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:617;Page:12600] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party to speak on the Corrections Bill. As Mr Richard Worth explained this bill has been long in gestation was much trumpeted in its early days and has now become a serious embarrassment to the Government. The Government has managed to procure a majority to get it through with the help of the Greens. The Greens and the Labour Party also pushed through the last bill we were talking about—the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill—a few moments ago. 
The bill has attracted a lot of attention because of its attack on the private prison managed by Australasian Correctional Management Pty Ltd in Auckland the Auckland Central Remand Prison. It has attracted that attention because the select committee could not find any good reason to terminate the private contract. Former Minister Robson who was first responsible for this bill had the grave embarrassment of sitting in the select committee and hearing witness after witness praise the management of the Auckland Central Remand Prison and express their fears about what would happen when the State sector took it over again. 
Although most of the Labour members were whipped to stay silent so as not to prolong the embarrassment and agony of listening to that evidence—a castigation of their policy—Mr Robson could not contain himself. He kept challenging witnesses and expecting them to crumble with his withering questioning. Instead they got stronger and more strident. The more he asked the stronger the evidence was of just how feeble his reasons were for trying to close down the management of Australasian Correctional Management Pty Ltd. 
But I do not want to spend my time talking about what is after all a very small though telling change. This Corrections Bill is the triumph of the philosophy that criminals are really victims. This bill is the final flowering—and I say it will be the final flowering because it will be one of those things that will have to be swept away when we get on top of criminal justice. This bill is the absolute acme of the view that if we are just nice enough to nasty people they might turn around and stop being nasty and be nice back. 
This bill encapsulates in its principles section—and I will quickly refer to them—the playway system of punishment. Of course it does not use the word punishment. That would be far too direct and inappropriate offensive or unacceptable—whatever other word is used as a criticism by the politically correct left. The principles start with the maintenance of public safety. Clause 6 (1)(b) states in a pious little reference: “victims’ interests must be considered …”. It does not say “taken seriously” but just “considered”. There is no definition of victims’ interests. That would be far too dangerous. Something like victims’ interests in seeing the sentence performed or the purposes of sentencing might have to be looked at because one of the interesting features about the Corrections Bill is that it has absolutely no connection with the Sentencing Act. The Sentencing Act tells us that the purposes of sentences are to denounce to hold accountable to protect to incapacitate and to rehabilitate. This bill chooses only one of those and it becomes the entire philosophy for the corrections regime—that is rehabilitation. 
Now it is strange that rehabilitation has been picked because it is the one thing that criminologists around the world agree is not achievable by prisons. Despite what we would all like to be the case and despite the hopes of literally 150 years of inspired very decent well-meaning attempts we have no real evidence—in fact we have a lot of evidence going the other way—that prisons can reliably rehabilitate. We know that they can incapacitate. 
We had a rather fantastic speech from Mr Locke who managed to tell us that the Americans now have 2 million people locked up and that they are in a vicious cycle of locking up more people and experiencing more crime. Mr Locke must be the only person who has ever studied the topic who is unaware that even the least successful state in the United States has dropped its serious crime by 33 percent its youth crime by a similar amount and other less serious crime by less. As an ordinary United States citizen one has about half the risk of being burgled that one has in New Zealand. 
Mr Locke could tell us because he feels he has no fear of contradiction—people like Mr Locke do not need to reason from facts; they reason from feelings—that the Americans must be in a vicious cycle of increasing crime simply because they are getting tougher on punishment. I tell Mr Locke that for the public the purpose of a corrections system is to punish. Punishment may have four elements to it—rehabilitation being one of them—but the more important ones and the ones we know can be achieved are to deter to denounce to give justice and to assure victims that the offender is not better off after the crime than they are. This bill does nothing to achieve them. 
This bill embodies the United Nations rules that New Zealand has never formally adopted. The United Nations standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners are for the first time being brought into our law. What is the most significant feature of that? It is rule 57: “Imprisonment and other measures which result in cutting off an offender from the outside world are afflictive by the very fact of taking from the person the right of self-determination by depriving him of his liberty.” It could have just said that imprisonment takes freedom and is therefore unpleasant but it goes on and states: “The prison system shall not except as incidental to justifiable segregation or the maintenance of discipline aggravate the suffering inherent in such a situation.” In other words imprisonment is punishment; imprisonment is not for punishment. 
By putting these principles into this bill this Government is giving the finger to the 92 percent who asked that crime be punished with tougher sentencing. That referendum which Government members might not wish to remember asked for hard labour. That referendum asked for things that this bill now puts beyond reach because it says that the Government cannot deliberately make prison an unpleasant experience. The only thing that is legitimate is depriving a person of liberty. 
Then the entire bill goes on to say what must be done for prisoners—not done to prisoners. This bill says that though the victim’s interests must be considered and that there may be decisions intended to reduce the risk of reoffending the offender’s family must be provided for. The corrections system must ensure fair treatment and sentences must not be administered more restrictively than is necessary to ensure the maintenance of law and the safety of the public. In other words one has to be as nice as one possibly can. 
It is perfectly proper for a bill like this to require that there should be no torture no cruelty or abuse of power and that there should be fair appeal rights. All of those things would have been perfectly proper but this bill goes on to say that one must be as gentle as one can. This bill says that one can do only what is necessary to ensure the safety of the public—not to achieve the purposes of entering not to deter not to denounce and not to hold accountable. 
When we get further into the detail it gets worse. The bill of the former Minister Mr Robson has scarcely been changed in relation to punishment. It is very plain that lawyers like Mr Tony Ellis—well meaning as they are—will now have a field day in respect of a bill that gives in almost every clause an opportunity to challenge the supervision and disciplinary decisions of prison officers. That is not because they are cruel or there is callous abuse of power but simply because they are not being nice enough or taking into account the purposes Mr Robson has managed to draw from the United Nations rules and now lock into our law. This bill should not pass.