Chauvel Charles: Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 08 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2039. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I want to say at the outset that Labour will be voting to send the Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill to the Law and Order Committee for scrutiny. It does appear on the face of it to be a sensible bill that will improve the way in which community sentences are administered and I commend the Minister of Corrections for bringing a measure to the House that does have that purpose. Too often in the past the temptation has clearly been for Ministers to bring law and order measures to this House that will not make a lot of difference to public safety but that sound good and play well in the media. I think we can be confident that this bill is not one of those.  
I think it is commendable that the general policy statement to the bill recognises: “Overall current legislation continues to provide a sound framework for the operation of the corrections system. However certain provisions have been identified as barriers to managing offenders in the community in a manner that is safe secure humane effective and efficient. The purpose of this Bill is to remove these barriers.” If it transpires that scrutiny at the select committee confirms that the bill will do those things properly then the Opposition will continue to give the legislation support.  
But there are a number of concerns that we have in considering this first draft of the bill—for example whether or not it does actually make changes that are sufficient and adequate to the extent that is needed for the protection of public safety given the technological opportunities that now exist in this area in particular. I was very glad a week or two ago to visit the Mangere probation service centre and to see the work that is being done there particularly in light of those technological opportunities and particularly in light of the changes in the way that the Department of Corrections now administers community sentences. The department has deliberately laid out its work areas in ways that allow for and maximise cooperation between teams so they can keep in contact with one another about the way in which different community sentences are being administered in the area for which the office is responsible. Obviously we do not want to do anything in legislation or otherwise that will get in the way of doing that. We have heard the chief executive of the department in recent days talk about the need for a restructuring of the department to ensure that its different business units work more effectively together. Again we want to make sure at the select committee—and I am pleased to see the Minister nodding—that nothing in this bill gets in the way of that aim and indeed that the restructuring itself actually serves that purpose.  
I think it is also important to remember that process is important here and that part of the scrutiny that this bill is going to require is the extent to which it amends other legislation. The Minister observed in her first reading speech that this legislation will amend the Bail Act. I note that there is another Bail Amendment Bill which was introduced to the House today and is in the name of another Minister the Minister of Justice. So we have two bail amendments going through the House. One bill is at its introduction stage and it might well go to another select committee than the one that the Minister has nominated for this bill. Although I praised the Minister earlier for bringing forward sensible reform there is clearly an issue of internal coordination within this Government in the law and order area and the Minister I think needs to hear the concern that I am expressing in this area—the temptation for her colleague to run off with another initiative the Bail Amendment Bill which was supposed to be a consultative exercise. There was going to be a discussion paper based on public submissions and then only on the basis of those submissions was there going to be a bill. Well Judith Collins has thrown process to the wind and we have seen the unilateral introduction of a bill today that would also amend legislation that the legislation the Minister has brought in before the House today would also amend. As I say if they go off to different select committees what will that say about coordination within the Government over law and order policy? How can we be assured that the provisions of the Bail Act are not going to end up at sixes and sevens with one another because two different committees of the House and two different Ministers are dealing with them at once? That is not a commendable state of affairs and the Government does need to get its house in order on that issue.  
I do want to say one or two words generally about community sentences. The Department of Corrections is set at its current rate to become the largest Government department. We have already heard the Minister of Finance say that prisons are a moral and fiscal failure and it is important therefore that the department takes an evidence-based approach as to what works and what does not in respect of the sentencing of offenders. There is plenty of evidence that community-based sentences work and are a worthwhile option to consider particularly as an alternative to custodial sentences where that is an appropriate thing to contemplate in the interests of public safety. There was a recent review of the sentence of home detention and it suggested that eligibility for home detention should be based primarily on the reduction of crime rather than the subjective judgments of politicians about certain kinds of criminals. I was very interested to read some remarks made by the current Minister of Justice in the past about what sorts of offences it would or would not be appropriate to have offenders on home detention for. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Before the break I was making some general comments about the efficacy of community sentences. I think it is useful for the House to note that the proportion of offenders sentenced to home detention in 2007 through to 2009 who were reconvicted in the following 12 months—the rates for each year were 21.5 percent and 23 percent respectively—was less than half those reconvicted following a short-term prison sentence according to the Ministry of Justice’s review of the sentence of home detention. The prison figures were 50.3 percent and 52.6 percent. What that tells the House is that in terms of combating recidivist offending these community sentences can be up to twice as effective. Judith Collins herself has said we need to put a lot more emphasis on rehabilitation but one of the problems we have seen in the last 4 years is that there has simply been no change in recidivism statistics. In fact reconviction rates have gone up which is why we saw the Salvation Army give the Government an F earlier in the year in its state of the nation report on combating recidivism.  
The other reason why community sentences are important is cost. The taxpayer pays $58 a day to keep somebody on home detention which is about a quarter of the $249 per day it costs to keep a person in prison. It is fiscally responsible to examine the widening use of home detention rather than dismissing it as a soft-on-crime option. It is absolutely the case that provided these sentences are properly administered they are not soft options as we can see from the figures they do give value to the taxpayer and they are effective at reducing reoffending which is something we should all be aiming for if we actually want a safer society in the long term.  
Labour as I have said will support this bill going to the select committee. We will be looking carefully at it at the select committee to see that it is actually adequate and fit for purpose. There are concerns around extended supervision orders and whether they are adequate. We saw the recent case of a person on a bus in Hamilton who was subject to one of these orders having been a sexual offender who reoffended. Clearly there is an issue around whether we can improve the surveillance of those on extended supervision orders and that needs to be looked at.  
Also as I said before the fact that we have the Bail Act being amended in this legislation and also by another Minister in another bill introduced to the House today indicates that there is a bit of disarray and a disconnect in respect of justice and law and order policy on the National side. We will want to see some guarantees that that is being addressed. But subject to those caveats we will be supporting the bill at this first reading.