Clendon David: Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2046. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am also pleased to speak to this Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill. We are supporting this legislation and are doing so with some considerable goodwill. We think it is essentially good legislation. But our support is limited to the select committee at the moment because there are one or two aspects of the bill where we do have some concerns and some qualifications. Nevertheless we will be seeking to remedy those at the select committee. I do not think there is anything that should prevent us from supporting this bill through assuming we can get some of those changes made at the select committee.Mr Young has just outlined some of the reasons why we support this legislation. It is clear that a lot of the reasons why people end up in the justice system are to do with drug and alcohol abuse. The numbers vary but it is absolutely one of the primary drivers of offending not least of all of violent offending.We know that despite this unfortunately we continue to under-invest in drug and alcohol treatment programmes particularly community-based programmes and it seems perverse that we do not adequately invest. I doubt whether there is a community-based treatment programme in the country that does not have a waiting list currently and that is strange. Even when courts are referring people to these programmes in order to try to prevent further offending often those courses may not be available for a week or a month. In the meantime the likelihood of offending goes on and I think that is something we need to address and do so as a matter of urgency.What this bill does in a sense is it aligns the situation for non-custodial sentences or indeed people on bail a little bit with what happens for people serving custodial sentences. It provides some mechanisms some operational tools to enable routine and random monitoring and testing for drugs and alcohol which will demonstrate compliance or not with conditions that are imposed by the courts by the Department of Corrections by the Parole Board or whomever it might be and that just seems an entirely sensible thing to do. It is frustrating we know to see conditions applied if there is no mechanism or means to ensure that those conditions are complied with.I think it will be a good thing for offenders frankly. People who are in the community serving community sentences do come under considerable pressure and often peer pressure to breach their conditions—“Have a beer have a toke ingest something or other”. I think knowing that they can be subject to random testing in this way will enable them to resist that pressure to just run around the margins to indulge in alcohol or drug taking or whatever it might be. I think that is a very positive thing.I also think that it is a means where perhaps the courts can take a little more comfort in putting out non-custodial sentences. We know there is a constant barrage of opinion—misinformed opinion—that would have it that only custodial sentences will do. The courts are often under pressure to imprison people in the misguided belief that prison is always a better option than non-custodial sentences or other forms of treatment such as specialist courts and the like. We know that is untrue but nevertheless the judiciary are under pressure to do that. Again the implementation of this legislation—knowing that drug and alcohol conditions will be imposed and can be monitored and tested for—will I think give the judiciary a degree of comfort from that.Just as an aside to that—albeit a related comment I would make—I recommend to anyone who has an interest in these matters a booklet that has just been published a small publication from the Rethinking Crime and Punishment website of the Robson Hanan Trust: “If Prisons are a Cause of Crime Why Not Reduce the Numbers?”. It gives us some very clear local evidence that putting people in jail is not actually the most productive thing to do. Despite a drop in offending—despite a drop in the crime rate—we are nevertheless putting more people in jail. That is perverse and it is wrong and any measure we can find to enable more use of non-custodial sentences is a good thing.There is one minor provision in the bill that I am puzzled by. The Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections and the Commissioner of Police are both able to make rules about monitoring about measuring and about setting limits. There seems to be nothing in the bill that obliges them or even encourages them to actually talk to one another while they are making those rules. To me that is a recipe for inconsistency for having a mix and a muddle. If they set different limits for example it would seem odd that there is nothing in there to allow for some collaboration between the two. These are matters I will take to the select committee and we look forward to a good process there.