Faafoi Kris: Parole Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Parole Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 24 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1871. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is my pleasure to take a call on this third reading of the Parole Amendment Bill—after the contribution from the member on the other side of the House Ian McKelvie sponsored by Cricinfo!Look parole is a very loaded topic. It is one where on all sides of the equation I think you try to strike a balance. That may mean that people around that conversation may not get everything they want but I think in this instance the balances that were sought have been found after some pretty good work at the Law and Order Committee. Those balances are around the rights of victims and we have heard a lot of talk around the revictimisation of victims who have to go through unnecessary parole hearings.As a former member of the Law and Order Committee in the 50th Parliament I was on a trip to Christchurch Prison—and prisoners do watch Parliament TV—and someone came up to me and said that they liked my contribution on some piece of corrections legislation. So they will be keeping an eye on our contributions and they will be watching us. For those at home or those who are not at home but are incarcerated the Parole Board has to consider you for parole every 12 months basically.As we have heard in other submissions from speakers during this debate a lot of those hearings are unnecessary. I believe that the Law and Order Committee during the submissions process heard from the Parole Board that sometimes it takes two three or four appearances before the Parole Board before the person before them is seriously considered to be worthy of being considered for parole. If you are on either side of that equation—either as a victim or as an offender or an inmate—a lot of that time would be just a waste of time or would be spent reliving a pretty nasty experience. So from that perspective we think the ability to move the minimum time frame between parole hearings from 12 months to 2 years is a good thing to make sure that you do not have the unnecessary Parole Board hearings that we have seen.Can I now step over to the victims’ side of the equation here and say that if the offending was serious—and I know that there were submissions from the likes of the Sensible Sentencing Trust; I do not always necessarily agree with everything that it has to say but I think it makes a worthy contribution at these kinds of times—there is a sense that if they know that the person up for parole is not going to be granted parole then that makes it pretty difficult for those victimsevery 12 months having to relive the ordeal that they have gone through or what their loved ones have gone through which is a very very difficult experience. I do not think we as a Parliament or the officials who overlook this process want to unnecessarily put victims through that kind of stress—through that kind of torment—every 12 months.What we think on this side of the House which is why we are supporting this legislation is that the extension of the window between parole hearings to a maximum of 2 years is a wise move. It will save we have been told around 800 parole hearings per year which is roughly I think somewhere close to 10 or 15 percent so it is a significant amount. Also I think the caveat there is that there is I guess an enticement for offenders that if they do meet—and I think in the legislation it was changed to “relevant activity”—some milestones or they do behave they will be reconsidered for parole earlier.I guess that is the trade-off that you do have in this legislation. Someone may come up and the Parole Board may say: “You are not ready and we don’t think you’re ready. You are going to have to wait 2 years until we reconsider your application for parole.” But if that inmate goes away and says “I don’t want to wait 2 years.” and they are of the mind to go and get themselves back on to something like a drug and alcohol rehabilitation scheme and they do good work they have the ability—if they meet the criteria before that 2 years is up or whatever the time frame is that the Parole Board might rule—to do the work in order to be considered earlier for parole. I think that strikes a good balance in terms of saying to a person: “You are not ready yet but if you go away and meet these objectives over the next 12 to 24 months then you will be considered for parole.”There is some international research that I think the Law and Order Committee was privy to which basically said that if someone serves out their whole sentence their likelihood of reoffending is higher than someone who might have been rehabilitated and then been given parole earlier. So I think that given that kind of finding from international studies what we are doing here is a pretty important thing to make sure we bring down recidivism rates as well. Again another one of the things that we are trying to balance here is reoffending after those inmates have either been given parole or served their sentence.I know that members of the Law and Order Committee got to sit through some parole hearings. I think that being on the Parole Board would be quite a thankless task. That is one of those jobs where like judges referees or cricket umpires you have to be perfect on day one and get better after that. I think the way that they have to operate and weigh up all the risks of reoffending by someone who has looked to rehabilitate is something that I do not think the general public appreciates. Of course we all hear when things go wrong and when someone who has been given parole has reoffended but I think—and I do not have the numbers in front of me—that on the whole the rigorous decisions of the Parole Board are ones that are pretty good.My colleague Poto Williams spoke about the kind of support that inmates need after release. It is one thing for us to say “You need to rehabilitate yourself and meet certain milestones while you’re in prison.” but I think it is very important to make sure that they do not reoffend once they leave prison—the kind of support that we should give them after they leave prison. It is easy for us to say “You’ve done it. You’ve ticked the box here. Out you go into society.” but it is not that easy. There will be some people who say “No you shouldn’t give them any support after they leave.” but I believe that if we are going to put within this legislation some milestones for them to meet that could give them the possibility of getting out of prison earlier we need to make sure that there is support for them after they leave so that these people who have offended—and some of it will be serious offending—do not reoffend again. We cannot just chuck them out into society and think everything is going to be hunky-dory. It is not always that way especially if we are in one sense fast tracking their exit from prison.So I would hope that the Government when it thinks about resourcing the likes of the probation service thinks about the kind of flow-on effects that this kind of policy has because we cannot just front-load it and try to make everything good while they are in prison and then forget the issue when their name is not on the whiteboard any more and they are out in society. I hope that we are wise and we are very prudent and make sure that there is support for them out in the community.I think we need to give credit where credit is due and having been through quite a few prisons and seen some of the work that is going on in the drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes I think a lot of good work is being done. I think we have all got a vested interest in making sure that there is less offending and there are fewer people in our prisons because as Bill English has said it is both a fiscal and moral failure. We do not want to be spending billions and billions of dollars on incarcerating people. We want to make sure they are all contributing members of society. But the fact is there are people whom we need to rehabilitate. Good work is being done now but through this legislation I hope the Government can realise we need to do more for those offenders in order to make sure there are fewer victims.