Worth Richard: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
Worth Richard: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
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Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) 
: 
 Members on this side of the Chamber have repeatedly urged on the Government that this measure should not be passed. But with politics being all about numbers it seems that the Government does have the numbers on this occasion to pass this legislation. 
Mr Finlayson has just sat down after making a number of comments about the separation of powers and about how inappropriate it is to involve the judiciary in the executive function. That is a concept that should be obvious to members opposite just as the constitutional affront should be similarly obvious. It is interesting to reflect that in other jurisdictions there are Sentencing Council equivalents. For example in the United Kingdom there is a Sentencing Advisory Panel and there is a raft of legislation around that. But those structures are not in the same form as the structures proposed in this bill. 
One of the worst provisions I would suggest is this new provision in section 21A inserted by clause 40 “Court must adhere to sentencing guidelines”. There is something very odd— 
Hon Mark Burton 
: Read the rest of it. 
Dr RICHARD WORTH 
: Yes I will; I will read the whole provision so that the Minister will not be embarrassed and he will have an opportunity to comment. Guidelines are guidelines; they are not mandatory instructions. But these guidelines are cast in mandatory terms. Why do I say that? The Minister invites me to read the provision and I will: “When sentencing an offender a court must impose a sentence that is consistent with any sentencing guidelines that are relevant in the offender’s case unless the court is satisfied that it would be contrary to the interests of justice to do so.” That is why Mr Finlayson myself Dr Mapp and others urge on members of this Committee the realisation that judges are being reduced substantially to the role of automatons. 
We know why this is being done. It is being done under a guise that there is significant inconsistency in the sentencing process. That is despite the fact that judges already have guidelines—in books they refer to and in cases that have been decided—that indicate what the approach should be in particular classes of criminal offence as to the appropriate penalty. I say that that is the guise under which this legislation is being launched because as others have said a key purpose in this legislation is to control the prison muster. The reality may be that in New Zealand there is an overrepresentation of people in prison. We do not come of course anywhere near the American standards but what—curiously I think—we have come to accept in New Zealand is the fact that prisoners must be housed in their separate cells. It is quite a rarity for prisoners in New Zealand to be sharing cells. In fact I understand that there are only about 1850 prisoners who are doing so. 
I reflect for a moment on my life in the navy as an ordinary seaman where on the mess deck for example of HMNZS  
Kaniere 
 my colleagues and I had—and I illustrate this in imperial terms—space of about 18 inches in which we swung our hammocks. On the particular mess deck that I shared as an ordinary seaman there were about 30 of us and we lived in highly cramped and rat-like conditions. The incentive to be commissioned and move to the officer corps was very compelling if only for that particular reason. This was the case in the army too. The army personnel in their barracks were often in bunkhouses of 20 people. But we have this curious idea that we have to have separate cells for each prisoner. 
What is driving all this is one of the numerical consequences of prisoner musters being measured in terms of the costs of building jails and we know that the cost of building jails is fantastic. If members think I am being over-imaginative on this issue they need only to look at clause 15 of the bill and the draft guidelines relating to prison musters.