Franks Stephen: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14160] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party on the Committee stage of the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill. We are discussing Part 1 which is the part that creates the new regime for child sex offenders. Of course they are now the lepers of the criminal community. This provision allows them to be supervised after their release for up to 10 years. This is a very sensible set of provisions and it should be extended across all offenders and not just for 10 years. If every offender served his or her court-given sentence so that we had truth in sentencing the offender should then be subject to a period of supervision of the kind contemplated by this bill but only for sex offenders. 
Why this provision is only for sex offenders has not been explained by the Minister. It is a sensible precaution against further offending. Sex offenders according to the Justice and Electoral Committee’s report and the figures we were given by officials are less prone to reoffending than most other offenders. The officials would have told the Minister that a typical serious or high-risk offender is likely to reoffend and cost the community up to $500000 in the 5 years following release on serving a sentence for other crimes. Many of the offences they might have decided to prevent by electronic monitoring or any other kind of supervision will be at least as bad from a victim’s perspective as they are for the victims of child sex offenders. I have no doubt whatsoever that the families of murder victims would be very happy to see the sorts of people who commit murder rape robbery or the sort of thuggery that leaves people injured for life under some kind of supervision at the end of their sentence that is as effective as is contemplated for child sex offenders. So my first comment is that although this provision may be sensible the limitations on it are very telling. 
I also want to mention the amendments I have put forward in Supplementary Order Paper 228 that would fill a gap. There are repeated references to the rights of victims in the Parole Act but no one seems to know what they are. Minister Goff tells us that the rights of victims are the rights to get information. Well I have seen the reports that accompany a parole application. The reports that come from the Parole Board have a single page that states the offender has attended a course of X and completed it or did not complete it; the offender has been in prison for such and such a period and that is it. The victims thought that they might at least get some sort of comment from the prison authorities or from a prison officer about the behaviour of the offender whether he or she is showing remorse the psychological assessment the predictions and what the predictions might be based on as to his or her reoffending risk. But no they get nothing of that. 
Well we do have a benefit in this bill. At least now for child sex offenders new ground has been broken and the Parole Board is allowed to provide the victim with more information if it chooses. The board is allowed to provide victims essentially with whatever it thinks is relevant subject to a right to withhold things that may unduly breach privacy or the effectiveness of the conditions. I have suggested that this is the opportunity to define what are the interests of victims. My Supplementary Order Paper that I mentioned lists those interests. They are not novel; they are precisely what the Minister has said is the object of sentencing. They are to make sure that parole does not undermine the denunciation that the public can expect and does not undermine accountability. That is the cute word used by the anointed leaders in the justice area to mean I think paying the price—what would more honestly be called retribution or even utu if people were ready to acknowledge what is really happening. 
My amendment does not break new ground in the sense that it records the expectation of victims that sentences should deter. I do not remember the number of victims whom I have represented or drafted submissions for—I think it is three. I have been to the Parole Board with two victims. I must have had at least 10 victims tell me that the key thing they really want is to know that the offender cannot do it again and that other offenders will know that it will not be worth doing. In their own words they are saying that they do not want the deterrent purposes of sentencing to be undermined by parole. So my Supplementary Order Paper suggests that this bill has the definition which should have been there right at the beginning that it is the right of victims to have the Parole Board give due weight—the term used in the Parole Act—to their interests. They need reassurance that so far as sentences may deter and as we all know there is a great argument about that the sentence is adequate to cause the offender and potential offenders to feel that it is not worth committing or commissioning similar offences against the victim or others. That is one amendment I will vote for and it is in fact Marc Alexander’s definition. It is a very fine definition and I will be very happy to vote for it. 
The way in which I have phrased it in my Supplementary Order Paper is as a reassurance that the sentence actually served will still deter the offender or others from committing the same or a similar offence. We are both aiming at the same thing—filling a gap in the Parole Act which means that “the victims’ rights to be considered by the Parole Board” is an absolute charade. 
I have also suggested in my Supplementary Order Paper that we show some genuine respect for Maori concepts of justice. I do not believe they are any different from the concepts of justice that are known all over the world and that every culture upholds—that is there is a levelling of the scales; there is something in the sentence that tells the victims and their families that justice means equality so that victims are not left feeling that the crime has damaged them and left the offender better off. And many offenders feel that. They see offenders getting something as simple as free dental treatment and free education which the victim has to pay for. They see them getting tenderly cared for as it appears to them and getting counselling and the victims are left without it. This Government has given $3 million to look after victims and about $500 million to look after the criminogenic needs of offenders. All that my Supplementary Order Paper asks is that the Parole Board takes into account and gives due weight to a victim’s expectation that there is a levelling of the scales and that justice is served. Mr. Benson-Pope can bray at us about this. This is what almost every New Zealander would think was the elementary minimum requirement of the justice system. It is only the anointed in the criminal justice establishment who could even be surprised at it. 
My amendment also puts in other changes to make sure that parole conditions or release conditions do not conflict with what the judge said when he sentenced an offender. It should go without saying. But we know that the parole system was set up in fact to undermine sentencing. The parole system was deliberately set up so that the court could go through its motions.