Wagner Nicky: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Wagner Nicky: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:7947] 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 I was pleased to see that the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections in his foreword to the 2005-06 annual report committed to “protecting the public” and “reducing offending”. That is what New Zealanders expect of the Department of Corrections and they expect the department to do it well. Seeing that the chief executive Barry Matthews chose not to sign his foreword or caption his photograph I wondered whether his recent publicity had made him infamous—so we all knew who he was—or whether he did not want to be associated with the report. He said there was no blood on his hands. 
As the National Party spokesperson on youth I am particularly interested in the prison experience for young people. After all young people are the most vulnerable of our prisoners and are the ones who would benefit most from support mentoring and effective education and training. They are the biggest threat to our society and are those who have the most to lose. I was particularly interested in the recidivism index for young people—those aged below 20 years. In each category—12 months after being released and 24 months after being released—those aged under 20 years had the worst results. After 12 months 46 percent were re-imprisoned and 65 percent were reconvicted. What is even worse is that after 24 months a staggering 60 percent of young people were re-imprisoned and 82.4 percent were reconvicted. These figures were marginally worse than in 2004-05. 
With this in mind I combed the report for initiatives and programmes that could help to reduce reoffending by young people. Obviously a safe environment keeping healthy and good training programmes are essential basics. In terms of a safe environment managing the prison population has been identified as a real problem. At times during the period under review the occupancy rate peaked at well over 100 percent. As we have heard the construction of new capacity and the commissioning of new facilities has been fraught with cost overruns and delays which have been well discussed in this Chamber. But my particular concern with this sort of overcrowding is just how safe the environment is that the Department of Corrections is providing for our young people. 
In terms of keeping healthy I am concerned about the level of drug taking in our prisons. Internationally the level of drug taking is on the high side; it is double that of Australia. As young people have the highest recidivism rates and are normally those most interested in taking risks I surmise—because the statistics are not broken down by age—that they too have a higher level of drug taking. Of course young minds and bodies are particularly vulnerable to drugs. This is an area that needs real work. 
My colleague Chester Borrows has spoken of the Reducing Youth Offending Programme—and spoken of it as a failure. The Minister has mentioned it too. The programme has been terminated which is probably a good decision. I was very surprised to read: “new young offenders were held on a waiting list while changes in referral criteria and treatment priorities were determined.” That was for the first two quarters of the year. The programme will not be available in 2006-07. I do not know how members feel about that but there will be few New Zealanders who consider it a satisfactory arrangement. Having young people in prison and on a waiting list before they can get help for their problems seems bizarre. Of course the reoffending gets worse. 
I was also concerned to see the percentage of prisoners whose sentencing plans were not in place due to muster pressures and a reduction in numbers of sentencing planners. Although the performance standard was 100 percent in 2005-06 the rates varied between 75 and 92 percent. I worry about kids who are on a waiting list for a counselling programme and who have no sentencing plan. 
Finally in terms of education and training in an ideal world prison could provide the educational opportunities that so many of our young offenders have missed out on. Of course we all know that the majority of offenders have low literacy and numeracy levels and a good education programme could make a real difference and give the kids a better future. 
In conclusion this report indicates that the Department of Corrections is not doing a great job for young people in prison. 
Report noted.