Faafoi Kris: Corrections Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Faafoi Kris: Corrections Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:622. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Taloha ni Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson and thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Corrections Amendment Bill in its first reading. It is a bill that we on this side of the House will be opposing on the principle that we disagree that private prisons should operate here in New Zealand. Our thoughts are that it is the role of the State to incarcerate and to rehabilitate. We do though believe that this bill will make its way to the Law and Order Committee and we welcome the opportunity to look at some of the measures that are contained in this bill and that we think are not as negative as having private prisons in New Zealand. That is what I do want to spend most of my time on: the question of who imprisons—whether it should be the State or a private firm. Charles Chauvel the previous speaker from the Labour side of the House has made many many points as to why we are opposed.  
The first one that I would like to bring in is that I do not think that in a society like New Zealand we should be having companies that operate prisons making profits out of incarcerating people who are charged by the State who are tried by the State and who are sentenced by the State and then at the final point in the justice system where they are sent to jail all of a sudden they can find themselves in a prison that is not operated by the State. This legislation will actually give private firms that run some of our prisons more power to determine what kind of security level the prisoners are at. As Charles Chauvel said we believe that that function which is with the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections should not be delegated to anyone other than someone who has a very close link to the Department of Corrections via the chief executive. We do not think that someone who is a paid professional and who has the motivation of making a profit should be able to deem who is a minimum-security prisoner or who is a maximum-security prisoner.  
I actually visited a couple of private prisons in Australia when this issue was being looked at in the early 2000s as part of my role as a journalist. When we spoke to some prisoners who had spent some time in both a State-run prison and a private prison we heard that they had noticed marked differences between State-run and privately run prisons in terms of the rehabilitation programmes that were run. I believe that it is our duty to the community to make sure that we are having decent rehabilitation programmes within our prisons to ensure that these prisoners are not reoffending when they are eventually released.  
There are also a number of other measures in this bill that we will take a close look at. One of those is around the provision of health services to inmates. We note that an Ombudsman report released earlier this month noted that the onus of the provision of health services should be moved away from the Department of Corrections and on to a health agency. That is from our Ombudsman but within this bill exactly the opposite is happening. It is putting the responsibility for the provision of health care fairly and squarely on the Department of Corrections. As Charles Chauvel said during the select committee process that we anticipate we will be having a very close look at why the Government is heading in completely the opposite direction around the provision of health care services.  
The previous member of the Government who spoke on this bill Jacqui Dean mentioned the extension of the powers around 24-hour restraints. We will also look forward to debating that fully at the select committee stage. She mentioned a couple of measures within the bill that she said negated our criticism of this move but we still think we need to have a good look at the reasons why prisons will no longer need a justice to come and take a look at the situation if the Department of Corrections wants to extend the use of mechanical restraints beyond 24 hours. We think that that was a reasonably common-sense safeguard prior to this bill coming into the House so we will be looking forward to being able to debate it at the select committee which of course is chaired by the member who spoke previously.  
There are also increased powers under this bill in respect of the use of strip-searches searches of prison cells the opening of mail and submitting to drug and alcohol tests and Labour wants to be assured that the safeguards exist in respect of these powers especially in privately run prisons. If we are extending some delegations from the chief executive in one area we want to make sure there are safeguards in this area where we are extending the power of officers in our prisons and that there are sufficient safeguards when they are being given more powers in respect of strip-searches searches of prison cells opening mail and submitting to drug tests. 
 Back to the first argument I made and the question of who is responsible for prisons in New Zealand: I am not sure of any polling that has been done but I would think that most people would think that if citizens are charged prosecuted and sentenced by the State it is the State that has the responsibility to carry out the incarceration and the rehabilitation of those prisoners. We do not feel that it is the role of private business to come into this sector and to look to make a profit out of those who have committed crimes in our community. We also think that because of the profit-making motivation of these private companies it can actually end up with perverse outcomes. Charles Chauvel talked about the Californian experience previously where there were cases of judges sending people to prison on the understanding that they would get money because of the higher incarceration rates. We do not think that we here in New Zealand should open ourselves up to that kind of thing. I am not casting aspersions on the judiciary but it does open up the potential for perverse outcomes when you are looking at making profits out of our prison system.  
There are also a number of things in this bill that we think do merit some further investigation at select committee but we also think that in this case maybe it is another case of legislation from this Government that is not practical. I know that Jacqui Dean released some figures that around 53 percent of people perceive that the Department of Corrections is operating much better under a National Government. But we do believe that this may be another case of where it is actually not practical in terms of what this bill is trying to achieve. The National Party is using this more as a plaything in terms of law and order to make sure it is looking tough on law and order issues—looking tough but not actually taking real action. We believe that if we are going to try to look tough on law and order then trying to do that by opening up more and more operational activities to private companies in the prison sector is not the way to go about it.  
So we will oppose this bill on the principle that we do not believe that it is the right thing here in New Zealand in our society for private prisons to operate firstly because we do not believe it is the role of private companies to incarcerate—we believe it is the role of the State—and secondly because we do not believe it is right and proper that companies make a profit from the incarceration of New Zealanders. It is our responsibility as a State to rehabilitate inmates and as I mentioned earlier in my experience with the Australian prisons the rehabilitation aspects of the private prisons that operate over there were probably not as beneficial to the inmates as they were in the State prison system. We will oppose this bill on the principle of our opposition to private prisons but we will look forward to some further investigation of some of the other measures contained in the bill at the select committee.