Dunne Peter: Urgent Debates — Corrections Department—Ombudsmen’s Report 
Dunne Peter: Urgent Debates — Corrections Department—Ombudsmen’s Report 
[Volume:639;Page:9833] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I want to begin by expressing my congratulations to Mr John Belgrave and Mr Mel Smith on what I think is an excellent report. It is clear it goes to the heart of the issues at hand and it provides a set of recommendations that deserve to be implemented in their totality. I think that is what we should expect of public officials of the calibre of our Ombudsmen and it is one of the tributes we can pay to the strength of the ombudsmen system in New Zealand—the ability to be independent to be clear and then to make recommendations of the type that have been presented in the last 24 hours. 
I want also to express my admiration to the Ashley family for their dignity and—really—their serenity in the wake of this report bearing in mind the events that precipitated it. I thought that it would have been understandable had they reacted by expressing a form of vengeance seeking some retribution and some dare I say revenge but I thought their quiet dignity last night showed that here were a family who were accepting of the situation who were determined to see good come from something that had deeply deeply cut at their core and who realised the futility of ongoing anger when a constructive solution was at hand. So I salute them for the way they have reacted. 
On the face of it it is absurd in the most perverted sort of way in any civilised society to suggest that a person who is under police detention and is being transported from one point to the other is at risk of his or her life. It is simply absurd to suggest that that is even a possibility; yet that is what happened in this case. I do not know very much about Liam Ashley I am not going to defend or attack the circumstances of his detention but he had a right to expect during that fateful ride that he was at least going to be safe. He may not have been comfortable he may not have been happy but he had a right to expect some safety. The system failed him woefully in that regard. 
So the question now becomes what to do. Is this an isolated event that this report provides potential solutions to? Or is it symptomatic of a much deeper problem within not the corrections system per se but the whole culture of correction in this country? I think it has elements of the latter actually. 
The previous speaker Hone Harawira made a very interesting speech and I was supportive of most of what he said. He did say something that I disagreed with however and that was that everyone even those people in detention have their human rights—or words to that effect. The fact is when people are in detention they have surrendered—or have had taken away from them—one of their most basic human rights: the right to freedom. What they have not lost and should never be at risk of losing is their human dignity. I think that is the distinction. In this instance certainly Mr Ashley’s dignity was destroyed. His life was destroyed and his family’s life was ruined. 
In many other instances we see a much more deep-seated culture in the corrections system that produces in inmates a sense that their lives have been destroyed or ruined. Some of them are people we would find incorrigible reprehensible and totally unacceptable to see released into civil society. But there are many in whom we burn out all hope during that period of incarceration and treatment by the system because of the overriding culture which is brutal. “Brutal” does not mean “firm” in terms of correction; “brutal” is “violent”. It is a violent system and it is an intolerant system. 
It does not follow that the alternative is one where in effect there are no constraints or no limitations because that is not the nature of incarceration. But it does follow that we have to be much more mindful of the fact that there are human beings involved here who have certain basic expectations. When they are being transported from one place of incarceration to another be it to a court or between prisons they have a right to expect they will be transported with a modicum of comfort—I do not mean “luxury”; I mean with a modicum of comfort as the report identifies—and safely. Their lives should not be at risk in that process be it from the system itself or from other inmates around them. When people are being held in prison we expect them to be held in rigorous conditions; we do not expect to hear of examples which we hear too often of petty brutality and victimisation and a system that almost seems to encourage that. 
It seems to me that there are immediate issues for the Department of Corrections arising from the report and I think the Minister and his officials have acknowledged that these require their strong attention. Although correcting them will be an important part of restoring a modicum of confidence in the system in so far as this issue is concerned what has been revealed by this incident and by many other similar incidents over the years—and there are many other questions that I do not want to go into right now relating to the behaviour of the department—is a much more fundamental problem with the culture of correction in New Zealand. 
I can recall being the Associate Minister of Justice some 17 years ago. At that stage Corrections was not a separate portfolio; it came under my remit. We had a prison muster then in New Zealand of 4800. The prison population now is 8000 but our total population has not doubled between 1990 and 2007. We are clearly—in response to public opinion and other issues—imprisoning more people yet every time we try to build a new prison we all know the outcry: “Anywhere but nowhere near me!” So we have this conflict. Our prisons are overcrowded and old. Many of them are dark dank neo-Victorian places. It is hardly any surprise that in that environment a crude brutal culture of thuggery develops. I think that is at the heart of a lot of the problems we now see being manifested certainly in the Ashley case. 
I know—and my colleague Mr Tanczos will almost certainly agree with me—that we have to start to think about the basis of this system. Violent serious offenders deserve to be locked away and I think there is a consensus around the House that they probably do not need to be shown a great deal of tolerance. But what about all the other people we are now routinely imprisoning almost up to that standard? We need to be more innovative in some of our solutions. We need to be taking the opportunities—such as the study group the Minister led to Scandinavia after the last election and the work that people like Kim Workman and those in the Salvation Army are doing—to provide a way forward. We need to be picking up that message. Yes we have to take on board the lessons of the Ashley case and yes there needs to be action arising out of the Ombudsmen’s report. But there are much bigger issues about this brutal culture of correction we have that we need to address if we are to ensure justice in this country. 
Justice does not mean a soft approach. Justice is fair and justice is hard but justice should not be brutal. I believe that is the real challenge that lies ahead of us. I hope that some of the informal discussions that have been taking place around this Chamber over the last few months pan out. Together we can start to develop a new approach that not only recognises the dignity of human beings in the corrections process and that society has a right to punish those who offend but also recognises that the punishment—and I quote this from Gilbert and Sullivan often—should fit the crime. I think we have lost a sense of perspective over the years and I hope that the outcome of this report on this particular incident may be part of helping to restore a fresh balance and a fresh approach on how we deal with these problems in our society.