Goff Phil: Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11611. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am pleased to support this bill. I have got to say that there are some law and order bills that the Government from time to time comes up with that are simply floss. They are designed to appeal to the electorate but they are not really effective. I have got no time for that sort of bill. I do not care which party introduces it. I think we are only misleading the public when we pass legislation that is all for show and has no effect.So when I look at a law and order bill I look at it first of all in light of whether it is going to be effective in meeting the purpose that it sets out to meet. I do not look at it in terms of whether it is a tough law and order measure or a soft law and order measure; I look at it as to whether it is an effective law and order measure. Secondly I look at it in the context of what our responsibility is as a House to protect victims and potential victims and to ensure the safety of the community. On those two criteria this bill deserves to be supported.From my point of view I think that this House always has to be on the side of the victim and of stopping more people becoming victimised. Indeed in the Parole Act and the Sentencing Act which I passed as the Minister of Justice the determining criterion had to be risk to and safety of the community. So I try to look at these things consistently regardless of which side of the House is introducing the legislation.So what does this bill do? First of all it removes legislative barriers to two areas where offenders were previously excluded from monitoring. One is that area of offending where the sentence is less than 2 years and the second area is where there is a sentence of intensive supervision. There were two other areas that were also excluded and the Government clearly looked at these as well and decided that monitoring of these sentences was not justified—that is supervision and release from home detention. The reason why those areas were not included was basically that these are at the lesser end of sentencing. You could not justify the expense of monitoring—I think it is about $3500 a year—given the low level of risk and you probably could not justify the intrusive nature of monitoring for those particular offenders but for the two areas that we extended it to you can.When you are sentenced to less than 2 years you are automatically released after serving 1 year in prison. Regrettably the level of reoffending by that category of offender—it might not be at the worst end of offending but it is serious enough to put you in prison and the high level of offending meant that there needed to be another tool to manage the person who had been released after 1 year and who still had 1 year on parole. So it is really important that we were able to act in this area to try to reduce that high level of reoffending.The second area is the sentence of intensive supervision. That is obviously less than an imprisonment sentence—in fact it is less than a sentence of home detention—but there were a lot of people in that category where it was useful for justice and corrections officials to be able to keep a watchful eye on the offender. Sometimes it was the sort of offender who because of addictions to alcohol or gambling ought to be prevented from going to those areas that would contribute to reoffending and it makes sense because a GPS system tells you exactly where that offender is.I suppose—although usually the sentence would be greater than this—it could be potentially useful for keeping a person who was at risk of sexual offending away from an area. But most particularly for those who commit domestic violence offences—you can get a domestic protection order but that is a piece of paper. It does not provide the protection that the victim or the potential victim of reoffending needs. Having a person on a GPS system who has been sentenced for domestic violence—again the sentence would be helpful in that regard.For these two areas—less than 2 years’ imprisonment and intensive supervision—monitoring is not automatic. It is still a decision by a judge in a court who independently decides in which particular cases the additional instrument of electronic monitoring is needed.I want to put a caveat on the question of electronic monitoring. It is not a guarantee that the person will not reoffend and I think the Government also needs to look at the level of breach of electronic monitoring that is currently occurring. You know since 2008 there have been 15500 cases of people on electronic monitoring who have breached the order. Sometimes it is a minor breach; sometimes it is a major breach. But 15500 breaches is a serious breach of a sanction that is not working as well as it should and I think the Government needs to look more closely at that.In fact we heard from the Department of Corrections last year that at any one time there are between 20 and 47 offenders out in the community who have removed the electronic monitor and are at loose in the community. To put that in context to be fair that is 20 to 47 out of 3300 people who are on electronic monitors at any one time. It is not huge but it is still significant. And it is significant to know that in 23 percent of home detention cases and 19 percent of community detention cases people are at some point in breach of those conditions. That is not a tolerable level of breach for a court order designed to keep the community safe.I can think of the case of Tony Robertson. Tony Robertson actually would not have been covered by this bill. He is the man who murdered Blessie Gotingco. It was an appalling murder. Everyone in this House would have had their stomach turned by the nature of the murder and the rape of an innocent victim by this man. At the time that he committed these awful offences he was on a GPS monitor. That is evidence that the GPS monitor by itself does not prevent a person from offending and if anybody in the House thinks that all you have got to do is monitor a person and that will protect the community they are wrong.The monitoring is useful only if it is backed up by the sort of supervision you need from your probation officer and by a programme for rehabilitation dealing with the cause of the offending. So the only thing that happened in the Robertson case was that of course they could convict him because they knew exactly where he was and he was where the victim was and where the victim’s body was dumped but that is hardly a consolation to the family of that poor woman. So yes this legislation helps but it is not sufficient in itself.You know one of the things that appalled me I have got to say was when I went to see the corrections officials in the place that the monitoring was occurring and I asked “Why is it so easy to remove the electronic bracelet?” do you know what they told me? They said: “Well if it was hard to remove what if it got caught in a piece of machinery and it put the offender at risk?”. Frankly that was a load of nonsense and I am glad that finally the Department of Corrections and the Government have moved to make it harder to remove the bracelet.I want to finish on the question of inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I see that the Attorney-General is in the House though I do not know whether he is taking a call. I know that he does not personally decide whether a bill is in breach—he is advised by his department—but to say that extending supervision by electronic monitoring is an unjustifiable breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act cannot be right. It is a limitation on freedom of movement it is classified as search and seizure and sometimes people say—wrongly—that it is double jeopardy but of course it is justifiable if it is helping to keep the community and victims safe when a person is regarded as being of sufficient risk to be electronically monitored. I would just ask the Attorney-General to have a look at how the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is working in that regard because it defies common sense to say that this bill is an unjustifiable limit on the freedom of the offender.Having said that with all of the qualifications that I have made on it this bill is worth supporting and the Labour Opposition will continue to support it through the remaining stages.