Dean Jacqui: Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDean Jacqui: Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill — Second Readings[Sitting date: 26 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:864. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki):Around March or April of this year a number of the members of the then Law and Order Committee of the previous Parliament attended Parole Board hearings around New Zealand as part of our consideration of a bill before us. One of the prisoners who came before the board in Mt Eden prison where I attended a hearing was a prisoner who ended up being recalled because he was detected hanging around a mall observing young children and taking photos with a cellphone—clearly in contravention of his conditions of release. It was quite a chilling experience for a layperson and a number of us on the committee observed hearings up and down the country. He was a prisoner who clearly against the conditions of his release could not resist going to a mall even though he had been forbidden to do so. He could not resist getting a cellphone and taking photos even though he had been forbidden to do so and he was of course returned to prison.So when I look at some of the statistics and note that high-risk child sex offenders who are targeted by the extended supervision orders that we are discussing today are four times more likely to sexually reoffend against children than the lower-risk—if there is such a thing—child sex offender then I consider the two bills we are discussing today to be timely.First I will turn to the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill. This is being considered by the Law and Order Committee. It empowers the High Court to issue a public protection order that would allow for the detention of a prisoner in a secure facility. It is aimed at people who reach the end of a finite prison sentence. The question for us is what we do with prisoners who are about to reach the end of their sentence. Clearly no Government is of a mind to simply open the prison gate and say: “Good luck—don’t want to see you back again.” That has not happened for many many years. Nor do we wish to release prisoners who will then go on to reoffend very quickly. When we think about that statistic—where at the higher level or the more serious level of offending those who offend sexually against children are four times more likely to reoffend—that gives us all across this House pause for concern.The Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill provides for those at the end of their sentence who are within 6 months of being released and for those who are subject already to the most intensive form of extended supervision order. The test must be high though and the previous speaker Jacinda Ardern rightly raised the issue that we need to get the balance right between keeping society safe from these offenders and the rights of those offenders who are coming to the end of their sentences. The test is very high requiring that a person must pose a very high risk of imminent and serious sexual or violent offending. How do you test that? Well under the provisions of this bill offenders will undergo a comprehensive risk assessment. A person must have all of the following four characteristics and they must be at a very high level.So first of all they must have an intense drive or urge to enact the particular form of offending. They must have very poor self-regulatory capacity evidenced by general impulsiveness high emotional reactivity and inability to cope. They must have an absence of understanding and concern for the impacts of their offending on their victims or potential victims. And they must have poor interpersonal relationships or experience social isolation. When these prisoners are within secure facilities such as Mt Eden prison they are closely monitored; they go through a number of programmes. Although it might be argued that these thresholds can be subjective I think we need to be very careful that we set the threshold high enough—high enough—to protect the most vulnerable members of our society.I will just briefly say a few words on the other bill under discussion today and that is the Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill. This bill enables the Department of Corrections to manage extended supervision orders for as long as is necessary for serious sexual and violent offenders who are at a high risk of reoffending and who do not meet the threshold required by the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill. So these bills work together.I want to come back in closing to the reason why these bills have been brought before the House: that is that although the corrections service has a focus on reintegration and rehabilitation so that prisoners have a chance of going back into society going back to their families and having a different life a productive life—and we all want that for them—at a certain point in time there are offenders within our corrections system who do pose a very very high risk to our children to women and to men and we must protect those people. I commend the bills to the House.