Sharples Pita: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — First Reading 
Sharples Pita: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:6876] 
Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 I want to talk today about the courage of a 13-year-old boy from Moerewa Phillip “Piripi” Tautari. Members should remember the name because all the marks of leadership are etched upon his signature. Piripi attends Moerewa School describing himself as “a very reliable person to this community as a fire cadet and an asset to my other friends within my class in the way of life skills.” But 2 weeks ago that young boy became another mugshot protégé as a photographer snapped him in a shot to accompany an article about the kidnapped Dutch tourists. As Piripi later reflected: “I am very upset to see myself pictured in the newspaper clipping as I felt that I was part of the criminal offenders.” 
But the taking of offence did not stop just with Piripi. Letters flooded in from 150 schoolchildren in defence not only of the model student but also of Moerewa. The letters all protested that in associating a shot of Piripi with a story about the brutal abduction and robbery of two tourists a perception was being created that served to cast that young Maori boy as part of the crime scene. And Moerewa was not having it. Its people articulated their outrage at the careless and irresponsible use of the media to project a false image of the boy and the town. 
The actions of Piripi and his mates is an example of the sort of everyday revolution that inspires hope. The hope is what we must all think of when we consider the measures being introduced in the Criminal Justice Reform Bill to arrest the sharp increase in the prison population. The Maori Party has said loudly and often that achieving reduced prison numbers needs a system-wide commitment not just an approach that merely tinkers with the management of penal resources. Just as Piripi his mates his principal and the community stood up to be counted so too do all New Zealanders need to become involved in an overhaul of the incarceration rates to stand up to injustice and to demand better. 
A key initiative in this bill is to give effect to the Law Commission’s recommendations to establish a Sentencing Council. The council will issue guidelines on sentencing principles levels and types and on the granting of parole. Sentencing councils or commissions have been established in England Wales Scotland Victoria New South Wales and over 20 United States states. 
At a very minimum we would expect that whanau hapu and iwi must be consulted by the council when establishing sentencing guidelines. Surely we must all be looking at indigenous alternatives for meaningful solutions to these enduring problems. An initiative that this Parliament could be investigating as part of the consideration of this bill is that of circle sentencing or circle courts. Circle sentencing arose from a decision of the Supreme Court of Yukon in the case of  
R v Moses  
in 1992. The presiding judge Judge Stuart was of the opinion that significant institutional change could be achieved by increasing meaningful community involvement before during and after sentencing took place. Accordingly he consulted the local Indian community and developed the concept of circle courts. Circle courts were known to First Nation Canadian peoples in more traditional settings but have recently been applied in urban settings. 
Over in Nowra in New South Wales the Aboriginal Justice Advisory Council’s circle sentencing pilot has been established from the local courthouse and directly involves local Aboriginal communities in the sentencing process. In essence it means that the sentencing court is taken to a community where Aboriginal community members and the magistrate sit in a circle to discuss both the offence and the offender. Interestingly this is the same concept that the Moerewa primary school uses. It is called a talking circle and when children make anyone feel sad or hurt they are called to account in the talking circle. Circle sentencing involves the victims of offences as well as the families of offenders and other respected people within the community. 
I come to this bill able to speak with absolute confidence from the basis of my experience within similar initiatives put forward from tangata whenua. In the mid-1970s we established a restorative justice neighbourhood court in Te Atatu west Auckland. This form of marae justice began as an independent unfunded model with schools and the community in general bringing their complaints of criminal or antisocial activity to be deliberated upon. It proved to be so successful in settling disputes and in providing for some form of reparation or restitution that the police and later the Waitakere District Court began to refer incidents and crimes to the neighbourhood court to be dealt with by us. The project was extremely successful because perpetrators appeared before a court made up of people from their own community. Expressions of guilt sorrow remorse anger and love were key features that ensured the success of the programme which had a recidivism rate of almost nil. 
That neighbourhood court and sentencing programme was later used by the local District Court judge of the time Judge Michael Brown—Mick Brown—to create the family conferencing programme for New Zealand children’s courts that is in operation now. In turn the elements of the conferencing programme were introduced to Australian children’s courts. In 2003 the BBC was so interested in the work we were doing in Tamaki-makau-rau that it filmed a documentary for its  
Foreign Correspondent 
 programme that aired in Britain and Australia. 
This marae justice is about real life not just crime. The focus is on restoring mana to the group to the whanau and healing the offender as well as considerations of restitution. 
One of the great mysteries to me then is how come we know that great initiatives are occurring in Australia and in Canada and that people from Britain are coming here to learn about our indigenous justice initiatives yet in Aotearoa in this bill there is not even a mention of them. The intent behind this bill relies on full and active community involvement. The introduction of three new non-custodial sentence options for less serious offenders including home detention and the two new community-based sentences of community detention and intensive supervision places far greater emphasis on the involvement and support of the community. Similarly the amendments to the Bail Act so that offenders are not unnecessarily remanded in custody rather than being released on bail demand a greater responsiveness on behalf of the community. 
Yet bizarre twists of policy change are included in this bill that seem to achieve the opposite effect. The Parole Act 2002 is amended in clause 120 which raises the non-parole period for a long-term sentence from one-third to two-thirds of the sentence’s length. Clause 121 shifts the release date for short-term sentences from the date marking half the length of the sentence to the expiry date of the sentence. In effect that means there is no longer any eligibility for parole. So here we have in the midst of a bill purportedly designed to reduce projected growth in the prison population moves to make people sentenced to short or moderate-term lags end up in prison for longer than before. 
The Maori Party will support the Criminal Justice Reform Bill at its first reading because we are passionately committed towards supporting moves to reduce prison incarceration rates. But all the tinkering and technicalities will result in more of the same. We must be prepared to learn from the example of Piripi Tautari and look at the bigger picture—the image from afar. We must apply our best thinking to stand like Piripi and say that this is not the prison profile we want for our nation. We can do something about it. We need to look through another lens. Sentencing circles restorative justice and involvement of whanau hapu and iwi may all provide some help for the solutions we seek. But at the end of the day I cannot help feeling that until the Government seriously tackles the big question—that is how to reduce the amount of crime committed in our society—our prisons will continue to be disproportionately full of offenders. Thank you.