Tanczos Nandor: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Tanczos Nandor: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14347] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 My co-leader and I will be doing the good cop bad cop routine with Mr Goff. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: I am likely to agree with you Nandor. 
NANDOR TANCZOS 
: I quite agree with my co-leader in terms of trade issues. The Minister has to walk a tightrope when it comes to matters of justice because there is always the need to head off the more extreme policies and promises of parties that are desperate to get into Government and the need to do what the Minister knows the evidence shows actually works to reduce crime and lower the crime rate. 
That tightrope just became looser because we are coming up to an election year and the “rash Brash” promises of abolishing parole for most offenders lowering the age of criminal culpability and ignoring a number of other international conventions about protecting the rights of prisoners will all go out the window. There is an agenda around the world right now among right-wing Governments to do away with international conventions to protect the rights of prisoners so it is no surprise that Mr Brash is following his American idol in that regard. But the reality is that there are no simple solutions to reducing crime and politicians who offer silver bullets are simply misleading the public. That is not to say there is nothing we can do about crime but the answers are much more complex. 
There is a desire for tougher sentences—that is understandable—but it leads us down a dead-end road of building more and more prisons to lock up more and more people for inevitably increasing amounts of crime. The fact is that prisons do not reduce the rate of reoffending to any significant degree and longer sentences are no better than shorter sentences at reducing reoffending. The real danger is that that focus diverts resources into building prisons and away from more effective initiatives. It is sad that the Minister constantly boasts that we have a rising prison population. That fact is an indictment on our country whereas we should be looking at how we keep people out of prisons. 
Let us look at the things that are being promised at the moment such as truth in sentencing and no parole. There are problems with parole there is no doubt about that—we see that in the newspapers—but the problems are particularly around monitoring. The answer is not to abolish parole; the answer is to make sure that parole is properly resourced so that there is proper monitoring and so that we know what is going on. Resourcing is a significant part of that. This is not an argument to end parole because the reality is that parole does work. We have just to look at the recidivism index which shows that in the 24 months after release by the Parole Board 15.6 percent of those released on discretionary parole were reconvicted of an offence compared with 28.7 percent of those released on automatic release. We can assume that the same would go for people who are kept to the end of their sentence and then released without parole. There is ample evidence from overseas as well that shows that parole and reintegrative programmes result in greatly decreased recidivism rates. 
That is really where we have to start looking. We have to start looking at a real package of what we are going to do to reduce crime. Everyone in this Chamber knows that the real answer is around crime prevention and early intervention and to Mr Goff’s credit he has put resources into those issues. He has come before the Justice and Electoral Committee numerous times and laid out some of the different pilot schemes that have been put into place around early intervention and crime prevention. 
I visited a scheme in the Hawke’s Bay where there were incredible successes in working with young people who were serious offenders at a young age—people who have been convicted of 16 to 20 offences of burglary and the like. They have very close monitoring and hands-on mentoring by extremely dedicated staff with amazing results. I visited a young man who had never been employed in his life and now he is attending school and doing well in his exams. He has been doing part-time work at a local business and is turning his life around. This also indicates that it is not just about Government intervention but that the community has to get on board. The community has to support rehabilitation. The community has to be prepared to give people a chance and give them another go to turn their lives around. If people come out of prison or wherever and have no chance of work or of getting any kind of decent income it is inevitable that many of them will go back to crime. So I acknowledge the work that Mr Goff has done on that. 
It needs to go further. We have pilot schemes but we need to expand them out. We need to look at a whole range of strategies aimed at the community and the family not just at individuals. We need to look at how we can strengthen families parenting skills and the like.