Goff Phil: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Goff Phil: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:612;Page:9463] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 Both Dr Mapp and Mrs te Heuheu have raised the question of violent crime. This bill is about compulsion orders for particular offences. What seems to have gone right over their heads is that every violent crime now subjects the offender or the suspect to a compulsory DNA test if he or she does not give consent. So the issue of violent crime has been dealt with firmly by this legislation. 
Mrs te Heuheu raised the matter of peeping and peering. I presume that Mrs te Heuheu was not on the Law and Order Committee because otherwise she would have been aware of the information that was given to that select committee. She may not know for example that peeping and peering is regarded as such a serious crime in this country that it is a non-imprisonable offence and it is subject to a maximum fine of $500. We are talking about taking compulsorily DNA samples before a person has been convicted. The presumption of innocence still exists. We have considered it to be sufficiently important that where the alleged offence is serious a compulsion order can be gained for particular offences but not non-imprisonable offences and not one that is regarded under the law and has been by successive Governments as being a minor offence. 
What motivated this bill was my strong belief that those who commit burglary will go on to commit serious sexual and violent offences and the statistics given to the select committee back that up. Forty-five percent of violent offenders and 25 percent of sexual offenders in that group had a prior conviction for burglary. There is a clear linkage between burglary and going on to more serious offences of a violent and sexual nature. 
Then we looked at peeping and peering. How did peeping and peering compare in regard to the causal link between that offence and going on to commit a serious one? Two percent went on to commit a serious offence. Ninety-eight percent of peepers and peerers did not go on to commit a violent or sexual offence. There were not very many of them—it is only 76 people. It is marginal. We are talking about burglary as an offence here. There are 60000 recorded burglaries a year. That is 60000 offences—that makes a huge difference to the use of those DNA samples for crime investigation and as an evidential tool. The member has taken three calls and wittered on about peeping and peering when there is no causal link and there are 76 of them. So for God’s sake let us move on to something a little bit more serious than that. 
I come to Dr Mapp’s point. He asked why we should not take DNA samples as we take fingerprints. The member may be aware that fingerprints are taken once a person is arrested. We are talking here about a bill that allows samples to be taken before a person is arrested; but whether before or after arrest a person is presumed innocent. Once convicted all of those people can be required to put their DNA on a database. But before a person is arrested the presumption of innocence prevails particularly when the crime is at the lesser end of offending. This bill is about making compulsion orders available for offences where they are somewhat serious offences.