Ryall Tony: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Ryall Tony: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14174] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 To listen to the Minister in the chair one would think everything was rosy in the garden in New Zealand. One would think that tonight hundreds of New Zealanders have not had their cars broken into that tonight many New Zealanders’ homes have not been broken into and that if those people live in Auckland they do not expect to wait 24 hours before a police officer comes. It is a fact that tonight many New Zealanders are at risk of being bashed on the streets of New Zealand. Although crime dropped during the 1990s—from the mid-1990s on—crime is on the way up again and reported violent crime is up 15 percent in the term of this Labour Government. 
If this Government is so confident of its discredited parole system it should tell this Parliament why 40 percent of people on parole reoffend within 12 months 55 percent reoffend within 2 years and 86 percent reoffend within 5 years. For some categories of offenders over 95 percent reoffend within 5 years. 
Ron Mark 
: So parole works right? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Yep parole works for those people! Frankly members on this side of the Chamber are left gasping. This Government can talk all it likes about what it is doing about the prison service the Parole Board etc. but 60 percent of the people who will go to prison this year will have been there before. Of the people released from prison 86 percent will reoffend within the next 5 years. We know what that means. It means that tens of thousands of New Zealanders will become victims as a result of people being released on parole—under Governments of both colours. Tens upon tens of thousands of people will have their cars broken into or stolen or their houses broken into and ransacked or be bashed or robbed in the street. So there is a human cost to the way in which the Government deals with the parole system. 
That is the reason why during this debate National members have sought to raise a real concern about this bill. We support the extended parole provisions in the bill; they are not our first choice on how to deal with these offenders—our first choice is a law that allows one to convince a judge that these sorts of people should not be released from prison—but we do believe that this bill has some merit. But it does not go far enough. We are most worried about what will happen after the 12 months of home detention supervision. The probation service told the Law and Order Committee that these people would be monitored or contacted weekly to start with and that eventually that would reduce to quarterly monitoring. The probation service told us that nobody would be monitored for the full 10 years and that about 8 years might be the maximum. 
Frankly that is not the level of supervision National wants. I give this commitment: a National Party - led Government will ensure that the monitoring of those people is real and we will make sure that if they are out the provisions that apply for the first 12 months apply for the full period. If we are going to agree to extended supervision it should be meaningful and the National Government after the election will make amendments to these provisions. But the Minister should not tell members that parolees are not reoffending. He should not say that tens of thousands of New Zealanders are not being made victims of the offending of parolees. 
Nor should he say that New Zealanders are treating the justice system with credibility. When a young woman in North Auckland was sentenced to 7 years in jail for driving a car into a crowd of schoolchildren and killing a young girl the whole country said she would not serve 7 years but would be out in 2. That is what has happened: sentencing has become discredited.