Clendon David: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9737. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): It is a little bit likeGroundhog Day. There is a very strong sense of déjà vu in yet again standing to speak to prisoner and victim matters and the latest iteration of this legislation the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill. We have had a—Hon Trevor Mallard: And it’s got yesterday’s date on the wall.DAVID CLENDON: Indeed it has yes. That will be part of the problem I am sure. The principal piece of legislation was first put into place in 2005 as a stopgap measure as a response to the political necessities of the time perhaps in order to endeavour to placate perhaps a very rowdy minority in the public who were objecting to some of the actions that were being taken. Mr Goff just spoke and I must say I am somewhat puzzled to hear such powerful objections to this legislation from the Labour side. I look forward to those members switching their vote and actually opposing this legislation in line with the speeches they are making. This legislation has not worked. It has not been effective in returning value to victims and fundamentally it denies human rights. It is an abrogation of human rights. It is not acceptable in a country that as we have heard this morning rates very highly in terms of our commitment to the rule of law and where we rate ourselves as being a country where corruption is not seen and where we respect and honour everybody’s human rights. This legislation is an offence to that and we will continue to oppose it.The fundamental intention of this legislation is to deny restitution to people whose human rights whose basic rights may be abused while they are in the custody of the State. We have seen instances of that where indeed prisoners and inmates were actually tortured over extended periods under the behaviour management regime that led to theTaunoa proceedings. The court found very clearly and made very strong rulings that the treatment of those men was absolutely unacceptable in a country that calls itself civilised and a country that commits to human rights. It is unacceptable and this legislation is equally unacceptable.I think that the notion that the public was demanding that prisoners inmates and people who have offended ought not to receive any restitution is not based on particularly strong evidence. It is clear that there was a very punitive approach in the air in the mid-2000s and to some extent that still prevails but you have to scratch only an inch below the surface in talking to members of the public in talking to NGOs and reading the public pulse. People are more intelligent than that. They understand that people do not lose their human rights simply because they have offended and because they have been imprisoned. If we are truly committed to that then everybody should beentitled to restitution if their rights are abused while they are probably the most vulnerable people in our society those who are in the custody and the care—I use the word loosely—of the State.Mr Borrows the Associate Minister of Justice in introducing this second reading pointed out that we have a solution available to us. If we do not want to see inmates receiving compensation for abuse let us create an environment where those abuses will not occur. It really is as simple as that. We do not need this particularly vicious piece of legislation; we simply need to ensure that our prison system is run in a humane manner that it is run in a just manner that human rights are respected and maintained and that even minor transgressions of human rights are not accepted so that this sort of legislation need never be triggered. It is not beyond our wit to create a corrections system where prisoners’ rights are protected and maintained.I have to acknowledge that there is some good work being done in the corrections system and the corrections area. The new Chief Executive Officer of the Department of Corrections Ray Smith—not so new now—is working very hard to change the culture and he is having some success in that. But he is trying to steer a very cumbersome very complex very slow-moving vessel trying to take it to a better place and we are nowhere near there yet I would have to say.I think we need only look at some recent examples. A senior corrections officer is quoted today in one of the papers—I think theDominion Post—as saying that the management of maximum-security prisoners is constantly evolving to better assist prisoners towards a crime-free future. I am afraid that that is rather an idealistic and simply an unsustainable proposition given for example what is currently happening in D Block the maximum-security block at Pāremoremo at Auckland prison where for a period of some 3 months over this very hot summer we have had prisoners in the maximum-security block were denied outdoor exercise. For 3 months those men did not get in the fresh air did not get sunshine on them. Imagine what that does to people’s mental and physical health—being denied for over 3 months that minimum requirement of simply 1 hour in the fresh air. That is completely unacceptable. What is that going to do to their attitude to their level of tension the level of stress within that already fairly volatile environment that is a maximum-security wing?As we speak for the last 6 or 8 weeks prisoners in D Block have been washing their clothes in buckets because the laundry facilities have been removed and have not yet been replaced with new laundry facilities. If they send their laundry to other wings only half of it comes back. That has been confirmed by the acting manager of the prison. They do not have that fundamental very basic and simple assurance that their personal property will actually be secure and returned to them. As a result we had an entirely unsatisfactory situation where prisoners were endeavouring to clean their clothes and their bedding in buckets of water without so much as soap or soap powder being issued to them. That is an unacceptable situation in the 21st century.Are we trying to stir up more stress in our prisons? Are we trying to increase the frustration levels of these already volatile men by depriving them of those basic human dignities of clean laundry and a breath of fresh air for 1 hour out of every 24 hours? Are we deliberately trying to create situations where we will get outbursts of violence in our prisons? Mr Kim Workman who made submissions to the Justice and Electoral Committee in February this year—a man with an extraordinary depth and range of knowledge about our prison systems—made the point that prisons will be made safe when prisoners observe that they are being treated fairly and decently.Anybody who believes that our prisons are holiday camps clearly has never been inside one. Prisoners do not expect to be coddled. They know they are not there to enjoy themselves. They accept that. But prisoners also know what is reasonable what is fairwhat the minimum legal requirements are and what the minimum requirements are in terms of human rights. And we are not meeting those requirements. A safe prison is one where prisoners feel that at least their basic humanity is recognised that they are being treated fairly. That environment becomes safe.Mr Workman went on—and I am paraphrasing him here; I am not quoting him directly—to make the point that we have a very poor culture and a very poor environment historically in our prisons and one day if we do not do something to do better our prisons will blow up and we will not know what struck us. We are seeing already expressions of that. Over the last 12 to 18 months there have been five or six quite serious incidents in our prisons at Rangipō prison at Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison at Pāremoremo prison. These are becoming quite commonplace. The Department of Corrections’ response to the latest at Rangipō prison for example was to actually deny that it was a riot despite the fact that 11 men were involved and 11 men were relocated. We are seeing these constant incidents quite serious incidents occurring in large part because we are failing to create a safe and humane environment in our prisons.The legislation that is being advanced today embeds this extraordinary proposition that prisoners should not be eligible for restitution if the State violates their human rights even to the extent of physical abuse and torture—nevertheless prisoners ought not to receive compensation for that. This legislation that we are making permanent today does nothing to make our prisons safer. It will do virtually nothing to protect or enhance the rights of victims. We need to have a comprehensive review of how we can assure that victims of crime in New Zealand are treated as well as we can treat them that the offence against them is made good and that the emotional the physical and the mental trauma they suffer is remedied to the extent that we can do that. This legislation does nothing. It is silent on that. There is no means in this legislation to protect victims beyond the most superficial perhaps way that could be possibly imagined.We need as was promised and intended in 2005 to look at the rights of victims remembering also that many of our offenders many of the people in our prisons are themselves offended against. That cycle of being the victim and being the offender is one we need to break. We need to address that and we can do that by intervening intelligently humanely and thoughtfully. Kia ora.