Tanczos Nandor: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tanczos Nandor: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 24 July 2007. Volume:640;Page:10643. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 In the very few minutes remaining before the dinner break I begin my speech on this series of bills by saying that the New Zealand prison rate is simply too high. I think this is something that is widely recognised. We have the second-highest prison rate in at least the Western World—second after that of the United States of America. It is to our continuing shame that this is the figure we have to face the rest of the world with. 
It is interesting that some would have us follow the United States’ model as an appropriate way of dealing with criminals and of amending our criminal justice system. That seems strange because what is the example we would be following? It is simply a dead end. What we have in the United States and what we have all around the world is a self-perpetuating criminal justice system.  
Members may have been quite interested to attend the speech by Angela Davis when she came to speak in this country recently. I do not think I saw any other members of Parliament there. Were you there Charles? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member knows he must use the member’s full name. 
NANDOR TANCZOS 
: My apologies Mr Assistant Speaker. Members would have found the speech to be very interesting and thought-provoking because Angela Davis challenged us to think about the possibility of abolishing prisons. That is quite a radical challenge in this day and age when the demand seems to be to continually build more of them. She said that we have to start thinking about how we would develop a criminal justice policy that was not simply based around the few most extreme violent offenders but that was based around the majority of offenders. The majority of people who are currently in prison are non-violent offenders and most people in New Zealand prisons like people in prisons in the United States and I imagine in most countries in the Western World are in for non-violent offences. Of course that is exacerbated by the fact that even whether an offence is classified as violent depends a great deal on how the police lay their charges and that is another area of some concern to the Greens. 
I hasten to add that the Greens’ policy is not to abolish prisons but it is to start getting honest about our prisons and to start getting honest about what they do and what they perpetuate. We have to recognise that in most cases prisons are actually counter-productive. We know that by and large they do not reduce reoffending. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
NANDOR TANCZOS 
: Before the dinner break I was speaking of the talk that Angela Davis recently gave in this country in both Auckland and Wellington. She talked about the prison industrial complex and pointed out that not only is it incapable of addressing issues like rehabilitation but it actually becomes a self-perpetuating system in its own right. We can question whether as a system it has an interest in rehabilitating at all because she argues the prison industrial complex is rather more about using the deprivation of rights as a punishment—as a way of reinforcing the rights of those of us who are not in custody and of reinforcing control and compliance—than it is about reducing crime at all. I think there is something to be said for that argument because when we look at it we see that prisons do not reduce crime and prisons do not rehabilitate. We have to start to wonder why we have an enormous dependency on prisons as a solution for criminal justice problems when they are so entirely and dramatically ineffective. 
The Green Party supports most of these bills before us now that the Criminal Justice Reform Bill has been split because we see them as part of a package aimed at reducing the prison population. We know that the early intervention package although not legislative comprises part of this package of policies and we support that. We support the use of early intervention and effective ways of stopping people becoming criminals in the first place. The bills before us introduce a new suite of non-custodial sentences and that is something we are very supportive of. They also ensure greater sentence consistency through the use of the Sentencing Council. 
In terms of the non-custodial sentences—and I have spoken on this in previous debates on this legislation—the move to establish a very clear hierarchy of sentences and to put in place some new tools that the judiciary will have available to its members to be able to sentence effectively at a lower level than imprisonment is something we hugely welcome. When we consider that more than half of the people in prison are in for non-violent offences we have to start by saying there have to be some better and more effective ways of dealing with that kind of offending and so we strongly welcome this move. 
This brings to mind the discussion in the Law and Order Committee just the other day with Judge Becroft who gave some very useful information about patterns of offending particularly for young people and the kinds of initiatives that are most useful in reducing their offending. He pointed out that a lot of young people who offend stop offending in their early 20s even if we do nothing and just leave them alone. He was not suggesting we do nothing but he was pointing out that taking those people and putting them in prison actually puts them on a path to greater crime and more serious offending and that using non-custodial sentences is much more effective as is using other kinds of methods. That is where family group conferencing has such a lot to recommend it as have things like restorative justice education and work—decent work that is fulfilling and that earns people a living. Some of those basic things are possibly some of the strongest tools we have in order to deal with offending. 
The other thing is sentence consistency. Mr Chauvel talked about that at some length and we agree that there is a problem with inconsistency particularly at those lower levels of offences. We support the idea of having something that will promote greater consistency. In fact we would like to see greater consistency in things like the use of police diversion as well. We know that for example in Porirua people cannot get diversion for cannabis possession charges yet they can in Wellington Central. We have to raise the question of why that is so given that Porirua is predominantly poor and brown and Wellington Central has a different demographic. Why do we have these kinds of structural differences in the use of police diversion? That was a concern of one of the recommendations of the Health Committee when it did its inquiry and I have yet to see any response from either the police or the Government in relation to that. 
Before I finish I want to talk about a couple of things that we oppose. The first one is in relation to the parole legislation and particularly to the making of confidentiality orders. This legislation will allow the Parole Board to consider evidence that is secret. Not only can the person applying for parole not hear that evidence but the person’s lawyer cannot get access to that information. This is extraordinary; it is an entirely inappropriate extension of anti-terrorism legislation which is itself flawed in principle. We just have to look at the Ahmed Zaoui case to see how problematic those kinds of considerations are. But to extend that provision to parole is just extraordinary. I know that some members are starting to develop the habit of referring to criminals as domestic terrorists but we think that that is a rather strange approach to take. If we are going to do away with the basic principles of justice then on that basis I think that this House has to take a serious look at itself. We could apply the arguments in favour of that to the arguments in favour of torture but the rebuttal is the same. First of all it is abhorrent to the basic principles of justice; secondly any evidence thus obtained is unreliable. That is why we have these principles as much as anything else because if the evidence is secret and the defendant and his or her lawyer cannot have access to what the defendant is being accused of how can we have any confidence that the evidence will actually stand up to any scrutiny? 
Finally I say that the amendments to the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Amendment Bill and the extension of the sunset clause are something we also strongly oppose. We think that the original legislation was a very poor piece of legislation and we think that it is time it came to an end.