Franks Stephen: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Franks Stephen: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:618;Page:13795] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party on the Appropriation (2003/04 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. I was quite enthusiastic about the speech by the United Future member who has just sat down. There was a lot of sound comment in it particularly towards the end. The real mystery—which I know is shared by Dail Jones who has been sitting here in the House and puzzling over it—is that for 2 years it has been in the hands of the United Future party to stop those things. United Future could have made it absolutely crystal-clear that the Budget did not turn workers into beneficiaries by simply voting against it. That is what people are elected to Parliament to do. However it is easier for Peter Dunne to make speeches than to vote with integrity. There is a very puzzling problem there. I guess it accounts for the Greens rather than United Future being the most favoured coalition party for the Labour Party should it keep the Treasury benches at the next election. Of course United Future has been a very faithful lapdog of Labour’s. Life is not fair. 
I want to address the extra appropriation in the Department of Corrections budget. In Vote Corrections we see an appropriation of $1342000 extra in a departmental output class called “Services to New Zealand Parole Board”. That is on top of another $1.25 million that will go on extra psychology pre-release and pre-parole reports. There is just under $3 million extra there and there is not really much explanation of why such a huge amount in comparative terms has suddenly been required by our Parole Board. There is some explanation in the Parole Board’s annual report which tells us that the Parole Board had 93 percent more hearings than anyone had expected. That is nearly twice as many as had been expected. Why? That is simply not explained. The board just baldly states that it had nearly twice as many hearings as it had expected to have. 
I will venture a suggestion: it may be because it is worth it to the criminals. Did some genius in the Department of Corrections or in the Labour Cabinet think that we could reduce the required time to reach parole from two-thirds to one-third of a sentence ensure that the Parole Act does not mention punishment anywhere deprive the Parole Board of any right to take account of the purposes of sentencing and order it by means of a specific provision in section 7 of the Act to release people unless it is satisfied they are still a danger to the community without having—surprise surprise—8500 or 9000 applications to get out of prison instead of the 3000 applications the Parole Board had expected? What a mystery that is! The average chronic offender according to the Department of Corrections’ own statement of intent costs $500000 in the first 5 years after release. So those offenders are let out to do $100000 a year of damage to the community and then an extra $3 million is provided to help the Parole Board members to decide whether those offenders should be let out of prison. 
Let me give members a few more figures from the Department of Corrections’ annual report and statement of intent. On average a medium offender will cost the community $3 million over his or her lifetime and a serious offender will cost nearly $6 million over his or her lifetime. Those are people who contribute nothing to society. That is a net cost purely in financial terms to the community. It does not measure pain and suffering or all the precautions that people take because they are scared—and rightly scared. The entire annual cost of the Parole Board could be met by stopping one serious offender in his or her tracks at an early age. But what do we see happening? We see that the Parole Board has decided—because it is told to by the law not because it is evil or mean or because it does not care—it has to let young offenders out to have a second go. Many of the young offenders who are let out are not first offenders. They are not having their second go but their sixth eighth twelfth or fifteenth go because they have been through the youth justice system in which we do not even record the number of times they have had to deal with the police. Then as young adults they are treated as though they are first offenders or young offenders when in fact they are hardened offenders. 
When the poor wallies on the Parole Board let such offenders out of prison what is the consequence? Once again the figures from the Department of Corrections tell us. Seventy-seven percent of those let out under the age of 20 are reconvicted within 2 years. Seven out of 10! I wonder why the Parole Board feels it can do that when it is not supposed to let anyone out if that person represents an undue risk to the safety of the community. I have asked the Parole Board what its members think “undue” may be. We know what this Government thinks an undue risk is when an employer takes it: when a director of a company has an employee who is hurt an undue risk is any risk at all. But this Government is telling the Parole Board to let offenders out of prison when it knows there is a statistical probability that seven out of 10 of them who get out under the age of 20 will be reconvicted within 2 years and more than one out of every two of them will have committed a violent offence. The Parole Board says that New Zealanders out there can just bear the risk of being hurt robbed and stolen from and of losing trust in their fellow New Zealanders because this Government thinks offenders have had bad potty-training or something like it. 
I will add a little more. There are no guidelines on risk at all. I asked Parole Board members whether they thought a 5 percent risk may be undue or whether a 10 30 or 40 percent risk would be. They have no guidelines on that whatsoever. Seventy percent of those with dishonesty convictions and burglary convictions are reconvicted within 2 years. Fifty-five percent of all violent offenders—again more than one out of every two—are reconvicted within 2 years. So too are 67 percent—nearly seven out of 10—of medium-security prisoners. And 43 percent—nearly one in two—of offenders are back in prison within 2 years. So we can look to the Parole Board and ask why it is letting any of those people out. What possible measure is it using of undue risk with that kind of probability of reoffending? Then we can look at the length of sentences. We are told that prison does not work and that prisoners have to be let out because they will get out at some time. Well we see the highest reoffending rate is that for people with sentences of under 2 years. It is more than twice the reoffending rate of people with sentences of over 5 years who reoffend only at a rate of 18 percent within 2 years. That is still far too much but it is an awful lot better than the 77 percent rate for burglars who get let out. 
We have a Minister who stands over there on the Government side of the House and gives us a vein-popping speech about the safety of the community. Mr Goff will have his comeuppance. The parole system is corrupt. It is corrupt by design and not because of the people running it who are doing their best under absolutely impossible circumstances. They are also told by law that they must give due weight to the interests and rights of victims but the right that most victims want is the right to know that justice is being done. In this House this afternoon Mr Goff said he did not think that the Parole Board should be taking account of seeing the purposes of sentencing were carried out. He said that was for the courts to consider and then closed his eyes to the fact that the courts cannot influence what the Parole Board does. 
This generous Government has given an extra $800000 to Victim Support to take its funding up to $3.8 million. One of the things that that will be used for is to nearly double the number of counselling sessions for the family members of murder victims. I wonder whether it has occurred to the Government that the family members of murder victims would rather not have seen the murder occur and believe that it might have been a bit better just to keep violent offenders locked up? Instead of cutting crime in half which as Mr Alexander mentioned has been done in New York we are letting people out—even someone with 777 convictions—to offend again. Today we heard of three people who recently returned to prison after 20 previous prison sentences and the Minister of Corrections could not even give us an assurance that with that kind of record they had not been offending while on parole. He probably does not even know whether that occurred. Well that will change; the next Budget may be the last Budget for this Government.