7. Question No. 7—CorrectionsHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of CorrectionsQuestion No. 7—Corrections7. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Corrections: Does the Government still have a goal of reducing the prison population by 30 percent irrespective of the level of crime in our communities; if so has that goal impacted on public safety?Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister of Corrections): When we became Government there was a prison population crisis—a moral and fiscal failure according to Bill English—which was predicted to see the population balloon to more than 13000 people by now far more than the network could accommodate by some 2000 extra places needed. That's why we set a long-term 15-year target reflecting the situation at the time. When we set the target it was not as the member's question implies a policy to do so instantaneously or without regards for any other factors including public safety. The Government will continue to protect public safety and support the justice system to hold offenders to account and I am progressing no specific policies to further reduce the total prison population. We inherited a prison system that was bursting at the seams and we faced things like quadruple bunking and converting old boarding schools into prison facilities. The member asks about public safety but I don't think having to put prisoners in old boarding schools would have been safe for anyone.Hon Paul Goldsmith: Point of order Mr Speaker. He did not answer the second leg of the question.SPEAKER: I think it was. If you listen carefully to the answer given it was addressed.Hon Paul Goldsmith: OK. Has the 33 percent increase in violent crime since he set that target given him any pause for thought?Hon KELVIN DAVIS: As the Minister of Justice has explained to the House on a number of occasions we know that a big part of this increase is due to the increase in the reporting of assaults by victims of family harm. And two new offences were introduced in 2018: assault on a person in a family relationship and impedes breathing. These two new offences make up 70 percent of all actsintended-to-cause-injury offences reported to police. Many of these offences were not reported previously. As a Government we have strengthened a range of laws relating to sentencing since coming into office including by introducing an aggravating factor when an offence happens in a family violence context changes related to the new offence of strangulation or suffocation and introduced firearms prohibition orders against offenders who are charged with a specific violent offence.Hon Paul Goldsmith: Has the 100 percent increase in retail crime since he set that target to reduce the prison population come what may given him any cause to stop and ask whether reducing the number of people in prison is still the right priority?Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Quite an amount of the retail crime is caused by young people who have not yet been to prison so I don't see how the reduction is impacting on the behaviour of those young people.Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he agree with the former justice Minister Kiri Allan that the gangs regard prison as their university of crime"; and if so hasn't he been in charge of the prison system for six years and what responsibility if any does he take for that state of affairs now?Hon KELVIN DAVIS: There was an explosion in the prison population from 2014 2015 2016 and 2017 which grew the enrolment rate of gangs in our prisons."