Williams Poto: Parole Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Parole Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 24 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1867. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): It is a pleasure to rise and take a call on this bill the Parole Amendment Bill. Parole is controversial. There is nothing like the stories that appear when someone has been released on parole and has reoffended while in the community. The community deserves to be protected and have the best things in place to ensure that our prisoners when they are released on parole do not reoffend. It is controversial so this is an important bill as it seeks to address some of those concerns that the community has.One of the things that this bill seeks to address of course is the frequency with which parole reviews are conducted by the Parole Board. Currently with the requirement of being reviewed at no more than 12-month intervals one of the major concerns of course is whether the prisoners have had sufficient time with which to engage in the programmes of rehabilitation. That is really important because rehabilitation speaks to preventing the reoffending. That is really what is at the nub of this I believe: our desire to ensure that not only do we protect the public from reoffending but if we look at it in the wider context that we protect victims of serious crime from being harmed in the first place.The view taken in this bill to extend the review period gives the prisoner the opportunity to work through those rehabilitation programmes. We know that having the current period of 12 months means that sometimes they are only part-way through and we know that programmes are effective only when they are completed so this gives us an opportunity to ensure that those programmes are indeed completed and completed effectively.It also seeks to address the concerns of victims about those offenders who do not take responsibility for their offending and the burden that it places on the Parole Board when offenders are appearing often with the view that they are not going to accept responsibility. Given all of the work that sits behind that review process moving the reviews to every 2 years rather than annually saves us thousands of hours of Parole Board time and from what I understand from the work the Law and Order Committee did thousands of actual reviews which is significant. It does give that offender the opportunity to work through the issues and hopefully work to the point where they are able to take responsibility for their offending and thereby take the full effect of the rehabilitation programmes offered to them.There are some benefits that have been mentioned about what can be supportive for victims. As far as I can see the benefits are twofold for victims. Firstly victims—particularly victims of crimes where the offence is serious enough for a person to be imprisoned—can respond in two ways really to the offence. Either they will want to be engaged in the process or like many of my colleagues have already talked about many of them are really wanting to put the offence behind them. So by extending the period of review it does give the opportunity—for those people who really are revictimised by the process of annual reviews and the process of being contacted by the department to be notified that the parole is coming up and their intentions around the particular hearing—to relieve and mitigate some of the stress for those victims.Secondly there are those who are wanting to engage in this process knowing that the review is done after a period of time in which the offender is able to engage in programmes where there may be some success in terms of accepting responsibility so that the victim actually has some peace in this process. So I commend it in that regard but I will return to the victims of crime at the end of my presentation because they are the most important component of this work. There is also the aspect that this potentially is a positive incentive for offenders who will consider taking responsibility and then take advantage of the rehabilitation that is offered to them.The bill provides for the alignment of the core milestones. I have heard some other speakers this evening talk about that. The parole hearings are lined up with the completion of programmes and it provides a better opportunity for a successful rehabilitation. What this offers is the opportunity to really look at prevention of reoffending. That sits at the heart of this bill. Recidivism of offenders is an important issue for us and we want to do everything we can to maximise the rate of prisoners not reoffending. Good access to good programmes good access to support and good access to prisoner release programmes give us a very good opportunity to ensure that we do what we can to reduce reoffending in the community.This bill provides some flexibility around the use of postponement orders which means that some hearings might be extended to as much as 5 years but that will occur only when the sentence is of an indeterminate length such as life imprisonment or when there is a sentence of 10 or more years.I want to turn to the victims of crime who are obviously the most impacted by this. Victims are as some of my colleagues have already spoken about at the heart of this. What can we do to prevent not only the reoffending but the offending from occurring in the first place? There are several bills that we have looked at that provide opportunities to tie that all together. But would it not have been a more appropriate process to look at legislation that actually looks at the issue of prevention of crime in the first place rather than legislation that tidies up aspects of bills?Some of the things that we will be discussing over the next few days including tomorrow’s member’s bill on paid parental leave look at some of the aspects of the lives of children and how by providing a really good start in life for children we can prevent what happens later in life prevent crime prevent prison rates and prevent poor health outcomes. We need to actually include that discussion in this debate because crime and offending do not come from nowhere; they come from somewhere and having a great start in life actually provides support around that. There will be some discussion in the next item on the Order Paper which looks at tidying up a few of those issues.But what do we do once we have been through our processes? What happens to prisoners when they are actually released back into the community? That is a big issue I feel. We are getting good rates with better educational achievements of prisoners but what are they leaving prison to go to? We need to look at employment and we need to look at housing and there are some other major concerns to address to ensure that when they are released into the community they do not continue to reoffend.This bill is in its third reading and we will commend it to the House. Thank you very much for permitting me to take this call.