Ardern Jacinda: Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 26 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13811. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to rise and speak in the Committee stage of the Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill. Labour is obviously supporting this bill. As has already been said the bill makes a number of technical amendments predominately to Acts and a few policy changes that Phil Goff who was the Minister at the time I believe presided over—the Parole Act in particular and the Sentencing Act in its original form.Before I get into the detail of the bill I do want to make some general statements about the justice area as it relates to community-based sentencing in particular. We have had Ministers from that side of the House trumpet for some time now that there has been a decrease in reported crimes that the National Government’s “tough on crime” stance has been the cause of this reduction and its much-heralded success. The honesttruth is that actually globally there have been drops in recorded crime. There has been much interesting debate as to why this global trend has occurred and there have been some very interesting theories but there seems to be consensus that it does not necessarily come down to the domestic policies of a Government. So that is an interesting contextual point to make.We do hear constantly in our domestic politics about this “tough on crime” line both by the National Party when it was in Opposition and as an ongoing sentiment when in Government. But what changes when National comes into Government is the way it is executed—“tough on crime” in rhetoric but suddenly it is OK with things like home detention which we are debating today. At the time as I recall when Labour trumpeted the need for these kinds of sentences and for community-based sentences there were some Government members who were vehemently opposed to any exploration of those kinds of sentences. So it seems extraordinary to me that the Government maintains this rhetoric whilst actually acknowledging that what Labour has always been is smart on crime. We do what works. We listen to the evidence and the research and we invest where it is necessary. We are willing to be bold and courageous and to invest in areas like community-based sentencing because not only as Bill English has said it is a fiscal imperative because the justice sector is costing us so much but also you see reduced rates of reoffending when you use methodology like this.Surely the focus should be on how you balance the need for someone who commits a crime to pay their debt to society with ensuring that we make the community safer by ensuring that we actually change something for that person’s life both in the way that they are reintegrated into society and also in the way they are rehabilitated. There are flaws—I know the Minister of Corrections knows this. I know she knows it because quietly behind the scenes she is doing things a little bit differently but not letting it undermine her “tough on crime” sentiment. She knows that ultimately things have to be done differently if we are to make any gains in this area. Even Bill English has stipulated that.I also want to highlight as I have said home detention. From 2007-08 and 2008-09 the offenders who were sentenced to home detention in that period who were reconvicted in the next 12 months sat at around 21 percent and 23 percent respectively. That was less than half the number of those released from a short-term prison sentence in the same years where reoffending rates sat at around more like 50 percent. So not only do you see a significant saving for the taxpayer and not only do you see those offenders pay their debt to society by the constraint on their liberty albeit in a different form than a formal imprisonment but we actually see that the success rate attached to that is much much better. So there are many reasons why the strategic use of these community-based sentences and things like home detention should be encouraged and used appropriately.In the face of that kind of evidence we still see a National Government that is inclined to talk about the corrections system moving more towards a privatised model. We saw this U-turn this claim that it was not going to turn existing public prisons into private prisons and it was going to do it only to new builds. But then it did it anyway with theSerco contract at Mt Eden prison. That actually sits in direct conflict with what the Minister has been trying to do on the rehabilitation side of things within the corrections portfolio. She may claim that groups likeSerco have an interest in these areas and can deliver the kind of rehabilitation in the corrections system that she is driving for but the Minister knows that as soon as you drop down in your staffing ratios the less time that you have with prisoners out of their cells and the less time that is available for you to offer those programmes it upsets the entire system. The Minister knows that because she also knows that those are the kinds of arguments that are madeby prison officers all the time. Properly staffing prisons is a key part of ensuring that we can deliver those much-needed programmes so that we do not waste time and send someone back into the circle of reoffending. They are inextricably linked with proper staffing and proper support of staffing in corrections facilities and that is something that I have no doubt we will continue to raise with this Minister—the very unsafe environments which I know exist and which corrections officers are exposed to.Coming back to the bill I mentioned that there are some substantive policy changes but then also some more technical ones. I had a couple of questions for the Minister on some of those. I know she will excuse the fact that I was not part of the select committee process. One of the changes to the Sentencing Act in particular allows pre-sentence reports for home detention or community detention. Offenders are sometimes sentenced to home detention and that requires an assessment of home circumstances to ensure suitability. There are some changes there also on I think post-release where the writing of those reports are handed over from the probation service to the chief executive. I just wondered about capacity to ensure that that handover can be managed properly and ensure that it is happening in a timely fashion. There are also changes that have been made to when home detention is cancelled when a subsequent sentence of imprisonment is applied. A court cannot order that an existing home detention sentence resumes once someone leaves prison. That is just a common-sense change. Again it demonstrates why Labour is in support of these amendments.Also there is an alignment of electronic monitoring conditions with the range of monitoring equipment. That was something that Kris Faafoi touched on and I will not traverse that again but it did make me wonder Minister whether or not there were elements where it related to the developing technology and whether or not there was a way that that did not need to be included in primary legislation given that there might be ongoing amendments of a technical nature that relate to the technology as it updates. That would prevent us from having to come back to the House with primary legislation to ensure that issues like this are dealt with. I do not know whether or not that was ever feasible but it was a question that I thought I would raise. But in that change it says that offenders may go beyond the boundaries of electronic monitoring equipment without breaching their conditions because although they may stray from the electronic boundary they must remain within the residence boundary. This makes it difficult to successfully prosecute.Alongside that in one of the technical amendments is the requirement to tell or inform someone with a home detention sentence of the boundary that they have applying to them and to tell it to those who live on the property of the boundary that applies to the prisoner as well. I wondered whether or not there had been cases where you had been able to prosecute Minister because it was found that they were not properly informed. Is that one of the reasons now to close that loophole that is in the legislation? I wondered whether there had been any cases where the combination of those two issues had led to unsuccessful prosecutions around breaches of conditions. It was just something I was interested in. Also it seems common sense that if someone has a boundary applied to them for home detention they would be told about it but I guess there have been circumstances where that has not happened given that it is now going to be clarified in the legislation.There is a question here as well around ensuring the integrity of the sentences. Time continues to run on a community-based sentence after an application to vary or cancel this sentence is made. So that means I believe that if there is non-compliance the sentence can actually be put on hold until there is a variation and then it resumes. What kind of time period—I am not sure; the Law and Order Committee members may have discussed this—may apply for that variation? I would be interested to know how longthat is suspended for. I am assuming that of course they still required to comply but the sentence itself is suspended. So they still have to be compliant during the variation but they then have to technically fulfil the sentence afterwards. That would be my understanding but I would be interested to have the Minister correct me if I am wrong in that sense.