Paul TamathaTAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Well welcome to an era of mass incarceration which has been brought in by Minister McKee and their misguided unimaginative approach to dealing with the very real harm that is happening in our communities.Let's be straight up about what we've got in front of us. We've got a concept of three strikes that we have imported from the United States of all countries—the country with the most incarcerated people in the world. That is the country that our Government has chosen as an exemplar for our justice system. And where did they get that idea from? They got it from a game of baseball—a game of baseball—where it's three strikes and you're out. But this is not a game and if the Government actually put some effort into basing their law and order policies on evidence rather than a game where there are winners and losers maybe our communities would get the safety and the peaceful way of life that they deserve.But we're playing games—we're playing games with people's lives—and it's not just the people that we're sentencing that suffer; it's their entire families and often their communities too because children of people in prison are nine times more likely to go to prison. And now thanks to the new young serious offenders category they can go into prison even earlier! That's the approach of this Government to law and order. It's a game of how many prisons can we build and how many beds can we fill with poor disabled brown people before the public rejects this failed logic. Locking people up and punishing people does not lead to the safe communities that the public deserves.At the rate we're heading we are going to need a new prison every few years. The billion dollars—Simon Court: Don't worry; we're building them.TAMATHA PAUL: And it's shameful. It's unimaginative. It's a waste of money when the Government could be putting that money into housing into education into job opportunities into liveable benefits into the public health system—but no let's build more mega-prisons! That is the sum ambition of this Government. They've scrapped prison population reduction targets they've removed Treaty provisions from the corrections bill and they have made it easier to lock up children with the young serious offender category because that is their ambition and they think they can just lock people up and that's going to solve the issue. Well it won't because it's a failure just like three strikes was a failure.The concept of continuing to repeat failed experiments is the definition of insanity. Three strikes was a failed experiment. It's a policy that has according to advisers limited evidence that it reduces serious crime. Officials weren't even able to identify any quantifiable benefits for this bill. And that's because there is none. There are no benefits from reintroducing three strikes. The evidence also shows that judicial discretion is better than mandatory sentences because it allows for the circumstances of each person to be taken into account. And that matters when you look at who's actually in prison: more than 90 percent of people in prison have a life-time diagnosable mental health or substance abuse issue; more than 75 percent of people in prison have been victims of violence. I know the Government loves to talk about victims of violence. How about that—that a majority of people in prisons are victims themselves? It's a false dichotomy to make it out like there's a difference. They are victims too. Around 71 percent of people in prison have significant literacy issues and one in three people who were in State residential care between 1950 and 1999 ends up serving a prison sentence.Prisons should never be the only answer. Yet they have become the only answer because that is the sum ambition of this Government and of the Minister. They choose to ignore the strong evidence about the failure of three strikes. They continue to restore failed policies. Until they wake up and realise it doesn't work we will get no better outcomes in this country.