Logie Jan: Bail Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Bail Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11533. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):Tēnā koutou tēnā tātou e huihui mai nei ki roto i te Whare. I would like to add to my colleague David Clendon’s voice in offering the Green opposition to this Bail Amendment Bill recognising that that voice is in a minority in this House.There are some key reasons that we oppose this bill. One is that it widens the range of offences that call for a reverse burden of proof despite the challenge that this poses to that basic principle of law that a person is innocent until proven guilty. We also oppose it because it significantly reduces judicial discretion when hearing bail applications despite the exercise of discretion also being a very basic principle injudicial practice. Thirdly it compromises the presumption in favour of bail for those aged 17 to 19 where the accused person has already served a term of imprisonment. That is despite there already being a provision within the Crimes Act that allows for the detention of people in this age group which really means that no extension of power to detain is necessary. So it signals to us that this is about more of a dog whistle to those who have that misunderstanding of what works in this system and the sense of needing to get tough on crime and the misunderstanding that that kind of approach will actually make a difference in our community when we know it will not.I would like to also note the Human Rights Commission submission on this bill when it looked at whether there was a basis for going against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It noticed: “Statistics demonstrate that most people who commit murder do so only once and the figures appended to the [regulatory impact statement] itself indicate that homicide and related offences amounted to only 0.1% of offences committed on bail from 2004-2008. The case for change therefore effectively relies on a reverse onus preventing less than one instance of a serious violent offence a year.” Therefore that is hardly the basis for undermining the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act for many many people.I would also like to point out and reinforce what my colleague reminded us: that in cases where people are remanded on bail 60 percent are found not guilty and that in terms of remand people are now waiting between an average of 1 year and 18 months for a hearing. So I just really want to ask people to think about what those two things together mean.I would like to now speak more specifically around the provisions in this bill and what they mean for young people. As I have highlighted we believe that the provisions are more of a dog whistle than anything substantive to address reducing crime. I would like to refer this House back to a piece of meta-analysis research that was done by the Ministry of Youth Affairs in 2000 on the consideration of youth crime. It was titledTough is not Enough—Getting Smart about Youth Crime . It noted that effective interactions with young people will touch on the four cornerstones of a young person’s life which are family school and work peer group and neighbourhood and be fair and respectful in terms of treatment by the youth justice system. It noted that those kinds of approaches will make a positive difference. But sadly arrest has little positive impact and particular types of sentences seem to have little impact on offending except for the situation of probation or restitution and fines. Things that really really struggle to work are residential interventions and I think we can consider prison the most obvious example of a residential intervention.Getting tough on crime offences almost always fails and the primary reason for that is that a lot of the young people who are most at risk of being serious offenders are young people who have come from situations where physicality and physical responses and tough responses to anything were the norm. These young people have been inured to that type of approach. What will make a difference in their lives are strength-based approaches. Sadly this bill is another example of a dog whistle to conservative interests.