Hipkins Chris: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:663;Page:10904] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I have to confess that I come to this debate on the “three strikes” legislation with some reluctance. I find it very difficult to place myself in the shoes of a victim of a violent offence particularly a victim of a violent offence committed by a repeat offender. I find it very difficult because I do not necessarily know how I would react if I was in that situation. Of course I think all of the members of the Committee who speak on the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill have a lot of sympathy for people who find themselves in that position. Our hearts certainly go out to them. It is understandable that they would look to the criminal justice system for an element of retribution and for punishment of those who have perpetrated those crimes. That is very understandable and I can certainly see why victims would regard that as important. 
However if I were asked to rank retribution versus prevention in order of priority I would place prevention much higher up the list. Although retribution is certainly part of our criminal justice system the prevention of crime in the first place has to be integral to what we do. One of the fundamental questions that we always need to ask about any legislation before the Committee is what it will do to prevent crime in the first place. One of the most pertinent questions in respect of this legislation is whether it will make an offender less likely to reoffend and whether it will aid prisoner rehabilitation so that offenders are less likely to reoffend when they are released from prison. A lot of evidence has been presented from overseas and from within New Zealand suggesting that that will not be the case. It suggests in fact that these initiatives will not improve the rate of rehabilitation or reduce the rate of reoffending once somebody is released from prison. That has to be fundamental to this debate: what will make our communities safer? Yes offenders are reoffending. That suggests that part of our criminal justice system—the retribution and punishment system that we have at the moment—is not working to rehabilitate prisoners and prevent reoffending. How can we improve that? I am not sure that doing more of the same making the sentences longer and holding people in prison for longer will necessarily contribute to a better outcome in that regard. 
I have spent a lot of time discussing these issues in my own electorate of Rimutaka. We have the country’s biggest prison in my electorate Rimutaka Prison and I am guided a lot by the work of Prison Fellowship New Zealand which I think does some fantastic work at Rimutaka Prison working with really difficult people. The last person to whom I spoke about this bill before coming to the Chamber was involved with the Prison Fellowship. He said to me that he had met some people in prison who he thinks are really bad people and he would hate to think of them being out there in the community but he has also met some people while working in Rimutaka Prison whom he would be proud to introduce me to. Those comments were made by somebody in the Prison Fellowship environment who was trying to rehabilitate prisoners so that the rate of reoffending was decreased and offenders were properly reintegrated into the community once they were released. I really take that on board. That person does not think this bill makes good policy because he sees a number of problems with it. For example prison discipline could well become a problem if prisoners have all hope of being released from prison removed. If they know that they are in prison for a very very long time and there is no chance of parole what will provide them with the incentive to reform to behave and to try to better themselves in prison? That is the feedback I get. 
I also have a number of prison officers in my electorate whom I interact with on a reasonably frequent basis. They do one of the toughest jobs I could possibly imagine. They deal with some of the most difficult people—actually quite awful people quite often—and a lot of the prison guards I talk to are concerned about the implications this bill will have for their ability to control the people who are in prison. I have a lot of sympathy with that view and I can understand the argument they put forward. In fact I think that what we should be doing is looking to refocus the debate in this area on to how we can stop so many people landing up in prison in the first place. All of the evidence that I have seen so far suggests that putting someone in prison probably makes them more likely to reoffend. Quite often it makes them worse criminals as they come out the other end of it because they become so disconnected from society. 
We also need to think very carefully about what prompts a lot of the offending in the first place. Many of the perpetrators of violent crime are often victims of violent crime before they are perpetrators of it and I think we need to look very carefully at that.