Faafoi Kris: Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13906. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is a pleasure to be able to take a call in the third reading of the Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill. It is a bill that Labour continues to support. As the Minister of Corrections did in her contribution to this debate I would also like to thank other members of the Law and Order Committee for the way in which we worked together. Unfortunately I am no longer a member of the Law and Order Committee but this is definitely one of the pieces of legislation and one of the times where we worked very constructively together from across the Parliament to make sure that this bill was a good bill and was improved at the select committee stage.It was a bill that we did make some changes to and I agree with the Minister that we made some very sensible changes to the bill. I would also like to thank those officials and members of the Department of Corrections who came along and gave us some very good constructive and practical submissions to the bill so we as members of Parliament could understand some of the technical realities of what the changes in the bill contained.As the Minister said this piece of legislation aims to make changes to the barriers to effective management of home detention and community-based sentences electronic monitoring and parole and extended supervision orders. On this side of the House we certainly think in terms of fiscal and rehabilitative purposes that we should be looking at the use of more home detention when it is suitable. Let me be clear: there certainly will be occasions when someone is not suitable to be given a community-based sentence. They would have committed some of the worst crimes and those people should as they are now be put into protective custody to make sure that they are not at large and to make sure that the public is safe from any dangers that they may pose. But we believe that we should look at more use of community-based sentences in the future to make sure that we can also fiscally afford to make sure that we punish people andrehabilitate them but also—to use that word “rehabilitate”—to make sure that it is effective.Can I just draw on one submission made by the Salvation Army to the Law and Order Committee where it quoted some Ministry of Justice figures. The submission said that “23 per cent of those on home detention in 2009 were reconvicted in the following 12 months. Conversely 52.6 per cent of those who served a custodial sentence in 2009 were reconvicted in the following 12 months.” It went on to say that over that period recidivism rates in New Zealand have remained largely the same. We have the Salvation Army coming to us and telling us that the figures from the Ministry of Justice have shown that for those given community sentences those who are given home detention their recidivism rate is at least half that of those who are given a custodial sentence. There is hard evidence that community-based sentences are very effective at making sure that those who have been given a sentence do not go out and reoffend. I think all parliamentarians would agree that that is certainly one of the things that we wanted to get out of sentencing and the Department of Corrections—to make sure that there are fewer victims and that there is less reoffending.The Deputy Prime Minister Bill English himself has said that prisons are a moral and fiscal failure and I think it is important that the department takes an evidence-based approach to what works when it comes to the rehabilitation of prisoners. I have already mentioned those figures that the Salvation Army dug out for us at the select committee hearing. I would like to commend the Deputy Prime Minister for making that comment because he knows that we cannot continue to spend at the rate we do with corrections but also we cannot keep locking people up and as those figures have shown have them come back and reoffend at a rate of 52.6 percent which the Ministry of Justice figures show for 2009. We have to find a way to make sure that those people to whom we are giving sentences reoffend less and also we have to make sure that we can find a way to make the corrections system much more efficient in terms of the money that we are putting into it.I do want to—as the Minister said—talk about some specifics in the bill that we on the select committee thought were good improvements. They are around being able to convert a proportion of a community sentence into training. I think it is something that we on this side of the House want to make sure there is an option to do for those people who are either serving a community sentence or in prison themselves. This bill provides that a probation officer may direct that up to 20 percent of the community work sentence of at least 80 hours be spent training in basic work and living skills.I do not think anyone on this side of the House would argue with that—that you can convert some of that time that you are spending on a community-based sentence into training to be able to prepare those people who are on that sentence for the time when they are not forced to stay in their residence because of the sentence that they have been given. I think that is certainly one good thing within this bill that will help those who are serving community sentences to get back on the straight and narrow. As I have said and I am quoting this repeatedly those Ministry of Justice figures show there is less reoffending by those who are on community-based sentences and hopefully some of that training that is made available to them by being able to convert that time will help augment that and make the rehabilitation rate much better and the reoffending rate much better as well.I just wanted to finish off on this by saying that we on this side of the House want to make sure there is an evidence-based corrections system. We do believe that there should be much more of a move towards community-based sentences. We believe that those community-based sentences for the appropriate people who are given those sentences will lead to less reoffending. Those Ministry of Justice figures have statedthat and I think everyone in New Zealand will want to make sure that while we manage the risk of community-based sentences if we can get less reoffending and fewer victims that is what everybody wants.Once again thanks to those officials who came and gave submissions to the Law and Order Committee. I think one of the more interesting submissions to the select committee was around some geometry and the difference between a circle and a square in terms of the technology that monitors those people who are on electronic monitoring and who can technically be outside the residence where they are meant to be but still inside the digital or electronic monitoring that is there. This Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill aims to make sure that those technicalities are looked after and we certainly hope that those who are supposed to be where they are will continue to be where they are with the technical changes in this piece of legislation. So once again thanks to those officials. We are very happy to continue to support this bill.