Franks Stephen: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee 
Franks Stephen: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14148] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 This bill is the first patch-up of the Parole Act and the Sentencing Act that were passed in 2002 and as a patch-up it is appalling. So many problems have been identified with those Acts and most of them were identified by ACT National New Zealand First and United Future before they were passed but this bill addresses only a few of them. A great deal of public attention has been placed on the bits that Mr Goff in his normal vein-popping fashion has trumpeted—that is the new provisions to put child sex offenders under up to 10 years of extended supervision. 
But those Acts also deal with other things. First the Parole Act itself has been examined in the course of this bill and all the Minister has touched on are a few minor—the traditional word is “tinkering”—matters. For example Mr Goff has now given himself his officials and the Department of Corrections people the power to put ankle bracelets or electronic monitoring on some parole offenders. Why not all? Why not any who deserve it? 
ACT of course believes that parole is entirely unjustified. There is no evidence that it does anything that a period of extended supervision at the end of a sentence would not do. But even if we accepted for the moment that there is some point in parole other than to empty jails at least cost we would find the bracelet restriction bizarre. Why should it not be a matter of prison officer discretion or Department of Corrections discretion? The people out on parole are out on a privilege; they should be in prison. If they are on home detention or under some sort of observation the conditions applying to them should include electronic monitoring without the need for any legislation. They are out on a privilege and if the cost of that privilege is to be under electronic monitoring they have a choice: if they do not like it they should stay inside so that is fatuous. 
I also noticed that this bill touches on cumulative sentencing but does not of course do what New Zealanders want which is to ensure that there is a price for every crime. Even if it is a small increment it is at least a price to make sure that crime is not an activity for which one gets a bulk discount or a write-off above a certain level. No—just to make sure—this bill says that a cumulative sentence cannot be imposed if the person already on sentence has been let out on parole. In other words that person has been let out on trust and breached the trust and now this bill takes tender care to say that the court cannot go back and make the sentence cumulative with the earlier one. In other words it cannot say to the criminal: “You’ve breached the trust. Now you had better serve the rest of your sentence as well as the new one for the new crime you have committed.” 
Of course Mr Goff and his colleagues think that would be unfair. Presumably they think it might make the criminals feel bad about them. It was not explained to us in the Justice and Electoral Committee what the reason for this provision was but looking at it it is plain that cumulative sentencing has been made even harder for a court to order. The Government will not take the risk of leaving it to the judges; it does not trust the judges. The real sentencing is carried out by the Parole Board. 
As we have seen this week the Minister has been sprung. It is very obvious that the Parole Board has been doing what the Parole Act tells it to do—that is ignore all the purposes of sentencing and simply empty prisons as soon as it can persuade itself on whatever fatuous evidence it has that a prisoner might not be a risk to the community. Until this week I could not have said that in such harsh terms because we did not have the frank admissions from an honest judge at the head of the Parole Board that what it is doing is taking risks and making guesses. That is an interesting point and members might not have been aware of it because the Minister made it look as if he were stunned by those admissions from the Parole Board. He made it appear as if he had no idea that it was not keeping a watch on whether parole conditions were being monitored or enforced or whether it was capable of doing so. 
I just draw to members’ attention that the report back of this bill was on 11 June. It states: “The Parole Board still cannot take account in ordinary cases of the reasons for a sentence it has no duty to consider whether the practical enforcement of conditions is likely …”. Now I knew that because I had talked to Parole Board members. I do not think the Minister had bothered. I knew that because victims had said that the Parole Board was completely uninterested in whether the conditions were capable of being enforced. Let me give an example. Anthony Roma’s conditions of parole were that he abstain from alcohol and drugs and live with his family. Victims told the Parole Board that those conditions were incapable of enforcement and that he would not do it. The Parole Board with its Lord Nelson policy of “blind eye to the telescope” did not want to hear that. It did not pay it any regard and Anthony Roma went out and offended again—as the victims had predicted in writing. 
Yet Mr Goff stands in this House and brings forward a bill like this that does nothing to cure those problems. He has brought in other Supplementary Order Papers but no Supplementary Order Paper to tell the Parole Board it ought to ask the Department of Corrections how its monitoring is going or whether it has the capacity to enforce conditions. He could just read the newspapers perhaps and see that the south Auckland probation officers are totally overloaded and utterly without the ability—as they were in relation to William Bell—to ensure that complicated conditions like abstaining from alcohol and drugs are feasible conditions on which the Parole Board can rely. 
This bill compounds this Government’s error. In clause 19 the non-parole period the court can set has now made an enormous concession to the judges. The relevant section section 86 of the Sentencing Act was wrong when it was passed. In 2002 ACT New Zealand tried to help the Minister out by providing some amendments and Minister Goff was saved only by Minister Barker at the last minute to even restore any power for the court to set a non-parole period. 
Now the public and the media know that the non-parole period is the sentence. The media know it because that is the way they report it. When the media report on a sentencing they report on the non-parole period. They know the rest is lies. They know that the parole system makes judges lie every time they give a sentence because the judges know that the sentence they are giving is not the sentence that will be served. 
What does the new section 86(2) that the Minister has provided do? It says to the judge that he or she can set a non-parole period to make sure that the purposes of sentencing are performed. That is exactly what ACT New Zealand says the Parole Board should be required to do. Why should it not? That is the thing victims are most interested in. Judges go through the charade of listening to victims’ submissions and victims are allowed to complain about how frightened they are but the Parole Board is not permitted to have regard to the most simple victim request of all which is: “Can I please be confident that after parole justice will still have been done?”. 
 Justice Ellis was patently clear about that in his interview with Linda Clark on Monday. He said quite bluntly that punishment was not a consideration for the Parole Board and it gave little if any weight to victims’ views on whether the sentence should be served in its entirety. He said it looked only—as it is directed by statute—at the safety of the community. It does not know what the victim’s rights are although the Minister tells us it is the right to be heard. 
The Minister is more than misleading in that area. He is trumpeting the Act as having been toughened up when in fact he has weakened it. This bill even allows child sex offenders to get out earlier. That was admitted during the select committee process. Previously they had to serve their sentence until the Parole Board was satisfied they were safe to let out. As it could not be satisfied that most of them were safe to let out they stayed. This bill provides for them to be let out earlier as long as they are wearing a bracelet. Even the trumpeted purpose of this bill—to toughen up the legislation—is not true. The Minister has been misleading the people of this country.