Little Andrew: Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13908. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): It is a pleasure to take a call on the Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill. I think as the last speaker Jacqui Dean said—or if she did not say it she meant it—how we administer sentencing and our criminal justice system is very important. Much work has been done over many years actually starting I think under the last Labour Government and with Phil Goff who was a very energetic very enthusiastic and very accomplished Minister of Justice. There has been a transformation in sentencing and the approaches we take tosentencing but of course these things are always subject to refinement in the light of experience. Prior to this bill coming to the House we have seen that there are areas of the community sentencing approach that can do with improvement amendment and refinement. This bill seeks to do that which is largely why we support it but we also do that in the context of although wanting a criminal justice system and the sentencing approaches that we take that reflect a community opprobrium and the need for penalty ultimately what we want is a corrections system and a justice system that effectively do what the corrections system says it is going to do. It changes behaviour and it changes approaches and people’s behaviour so that those who have offended against the criminal statutes and with it society’s expectations have the benefit not only of reflecting on their actions but of changing their approaches and their behaviour too.There is no question that recidivism remains a very difficult issue and a common outcome to our criminal justice system so more has to be done. The more that we can have a criminal justice system that takes the vast bulk of offenders—who are not inherently bad people but are people who have a time in their lives often when they are younger because these are often younger men who just do the wrong thing and make bad choices and who sometimes do things that are very harmful to others—and provides them with the means to transform themselves transform their lives and make better choices then that would be better for all of us. It would be better for them it would be better for the community and ultimately it would be better for the taxpayer and their back pocket. So anything that we can do to promote and enhance our community sentences such as leaving people in the community with appropriate support but paying their dues to society is a good thing. It is having the ability to amend community sentences. When a person who has been sentenced to one then finds himself or herself sentenced to another amending the original sentence so that we can draw those two together is of course a very good thing and that is what this bill does.This bill has at least had the benefit of going through and achieving agreement between those of us across the House and I think that is reflective of the very value and the very principle that we want to support and annunciate in a coherent and modern criminal justice system—a system that takes people who for whatever reason have offended and gives them the chance to understand the community’s expectations of them as citizens and to make them good and worthy citizens as well. The more we can do that and the less we resort to the barbaric and frankly continually failing approach of throwing people in the old clink leaving them there and expecting that after 3 4 or 5 years somehow they are going to be a transformed citizen—we know that that approach is increasingly failing. Community sentences play a very important role in our criminal justice system and in our suite of sentences that are available to judges. The more we can do to make them work and make them effective then the better it is for the justice system and for every New Zealand citizen. The more we can have a system that ensures that people can fulfil or at least reach their potential even after having offended against the community then that is good for all of us.So on that basis we support this bill. It is a very good bill. I acknowledge the work that the Law and Order Committee has done on achieving consensus and bringing the bill back and hopefully making yet another refinement and taking another step that gives us something closer to the type of model of criminal justice system that we want and that we aspire to.Bill read a third time.