Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Chairperson of the Justice Committee): Thank you very much Madam Chair. The Justice Committee reported back to the House on annual reviews in the justice sector in March 2021. We held a hearing with the chief executive of the Department of Corrections which is Jeremy Lightfoot and officials on 18 February of this year. The committee heard a range of issues but the three main ones that we heard were Hōkai Rangi the new departmental strategy; the impact of COVID-19 on Corrections' work and their response to the pandemic; and also the wider management of people in the corrections system. In relation to the Hōkai Rangi strategy the committee heard that since the strategy has been launched in 2019 it's been designed to improve outcomes for Māori and whānau and to try and address the significant overrepresentation of Māori in the corrections system. We heard how Hōkai Rangi had been operating and in particular the committee was very interested to hear about the Māori Pathways programme. This is a key part of Hōkai Rangi. It's a four-year programme with projects that are co-designed with iwi and with whānau and results in the programme jointly are assessed by both iwi Māori and the Crown. We also learnt that the department has been working with iwi and they gave examples of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Raukawa and the working alongside of the Waikato District Health Board to design and deliver a service for the Waikeria mental health and addiction service. So the next main area I will touch upon is the general management of people in the corrections system. In 2018 the Government announced the bold goal of reducing the prison population by 30 percent over the 15 years. It was interesting to note that in 2019 to 2020 the total prison population had reduced for a third year consecutively as at June 2020. However it was interesting to note that the prison forecasts still projected gross growth in that space and so the department responded to those questions from committee members to particularly look at the peak of remand population at 39 percent. The committee heard in terms of a range of measures that have been used to address this and one of those was EM bail or electronic monitoring on bail which is a form of monitoring people outside of prison. The Corrections annual report for 2019-20 noted that the number of EM bail applications received had increased by 35 percent over the last two years and that they expected further growth in that space. The committee also heard about community-based sentences and how they were operating over the past year and we were told that about 28000 people were being managed on sentence in the community. We also heard about reducing reoffending and recidivism and some of the key areas in that space. The last area I'll touch upon is that committee members discussed prisoner assaults. The chief executive told the committee that the increase in no-injury assaults was due to the change in culture in the department where the staff have been encouraged to report early and in a preventative way to reduce any instances of violent behaviour. I note that committee members will be interested to ask questions of the Minister and I therefore allow those questions to take part.