Hipkins Chris: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — Second Reading 
Hipkins Chris: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — Second Reading 
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CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 As with all debates on law and order the rhetoric is the easy part. It is easy to stand up and say that we will be tough on crime by locking up more criminals for longer and that we will make communities safer by locking up more people for longer. The reality is somewhat different. I find it totally offensive that any member of the House would label another member or group of members based on their support or opposition to this particular measure as being soft on crime or tough on crime. It is a lot more complicated than that and the public of New Zealand deserve better than the type of hollow rhetoric that so often characterises the debates we have on law and order. 
People are not stupid. People are smart enough to know that we have one of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world and that doing more of the same simply leads to more of the same. For the last couple of decades we have been on a trajectory that has seen us exponentially increase the number of people we have put into prison but has that made our community safer? No it has not. It has not made our community safer and it will not make our community safer. 
I absolutely abhor violent crime and I think yes those who commit violent crime should be held to account for their actions—absolutely. But I think that we as an entire community should also be held to account for the moves that we take to prevent crime from happening in the first place and should get serious about addressing the drivers of crime. I congratulate Simon Power on having the gumption to hold a ministerial meeting on the drivers of crime and on getting serious about some discussion around those things. 
We as a society cannot keep turning our backs on the people who commit crimes suggesting that only they are responsible. There is the old saying that it takes a village to raise a child and it is absolutely true. We cannot simply turn our backs on the ones who get into trouble. We all have to accept responsibility for them. We have to accept the fact that in many cases offenders have themselves been victims before they were offenders. Often they have lived in households where little love was shown towards them where they were abused and where the love they knew was actually violence. We cannot turn our backs on them and simply say we will lock them up and throw away the key. We must look seriously at the causes of criminal offending including the causes of violent crime. The rhetoric is the easy part; the solutions are a lot harder. I for one will not label members on any side of the House as soft or tough on crime based on whether they support or oppose this bill. 
I will talk about a number of serious concerns I have about this bill as it stands and suggest that there are other better ways that we can deal with the issues. I believe that this bill removes some of the motivations for offenders to reform and better themselves and increases in some cases the likelihood of reoffending and the seriousness of the reoffending should it occur. We can keep people in prison for longer but there is no evidence from anywhere that suggests it makes them less likely to reoffend. 
This bill is bad for victims and the Ministry of Justice has advised that it will lead to fewer guilty pleas and more appeals which means the victims of crime will be dragged through lengthy and painful trials and appeals processes. That is one of the key questions that we should always ask in a law and order debate on any issue: what will this measure do for victims? Will it make them better off will it help them or will it simply provide them with an outlet for their anger? 
I can understand why victims of crime often have so much anger towards those who commit criminal offences. That is one of the reasons that victims of crime are not on juries and are not the judges—they cannot make objective judgments. It is why we have an independent judiciary. That practice goes back hundreds of years and it is absolutely right for us to have an independent judiciary and independent juries so that proper decisions can be made free from the emotion of being directly involved in something. I understand the anger that so many victims have. That does not mean we should necessarily be locking people up for longer and resorting to a much more primal instinct of retribution. It is not the right way to go. 
There are many problems with this bill as it is drafted. It removes judicial discretion. As I said we have to trust judges. Only on the first qualifying offence will the court solely determine the sentence. For the second offence the offender will serve any prison sentence that is imposed in full without parole. For the third offence the judge will have no discretion whatsoever. The judge will be required to impose the maximum sentence with no parole regardless of any extenuating circumstances. What I ask then is the point of having an independent judiciary if judges do not get to make independent judgments? We have to trust judges. We have to give them discretion. 
We also have to ask what the bill will do in terms of the discretion that it provides to the police and the pressures that it may place on the police. For example the bill removes all judicial discretion at the third strike and severely limits it at strike two but the police on the other hand will have much greater discretion. Under this legislation the police could for example lay a charge of aggravated injury against an offender which is a “three strikes” offence but then plea-bargain with the offender and reduce the charge to aggravated assault which is not a “three strikes” offence. They could do that on the condition that the offender pleaded guilty to the lesser charge. So the police discretion to prevent something getting into a court of law is greater than the discretion that judges have once the matter reaches the courts. How can that be fair? How can that be consistent with an open transparent and fair judicial system? It simply cannot be. 
The bill potentially leads to punishments not fitting the crime. Under this bill it is no longer just about the most serious offenders as the Government claims because some of the qualifying offences can cover conduct ranging from serious to relatively minor. This bill could lead to situations where the punishment does not fit the crime. 
It potentially reduces the incentives or ability to gain guilty pleas from those who have committed an offence. Studies in the United States have found that the rate of guilty pleas decreased after the “three strikes” law came into force because there was no incentive to plead guilty and defendants hoped that juries would find them not guilty when they discovered what the penalty would be. That is the other challenge to the judicial system and to those who serve on a jury. Will a jury find somebody guilty if its members know that the consequence of doing so is that the person may well never ever be released from jail? So we put more pressure on the judiciary. 
It places more pressure on victims of domestic violence because they may be less likely to report abuse if it is more likely to result in a lengthy term for the abuser. That is something we should think very long and hard about. 
Of course tremendous pressure is placed on those who work in the prisons. If prisoners are never to be released where is the incentive for them to behave appropriately in prison and make any effort whatsoever to reform their ways? If they know that they will go to prison if they get caught for a crime it will create more of an incentive for them to go further with that crime. Someone on a third strike who does something wrong may think that he or she could commit another crime—maybe kill the person who saw the crime being committed—knowing that he or she will go to prison anyway. What is the incentive for that offender not to do that? There is no incentive. 
The rhetoric on this issue is easy. The complexities are so much more difficult. We need to step back from the raw emotion of the law and order debate and consider what will work. We need to step back and consider the drivers of crime. We need to look at drug-dependency victimisation within the home family violence and so on. Those are the things we should be looking at. This is a punitive bill and it will not make our communities safer.