Clendon David: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 04 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10661. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to take the opportunity to speak in this debate on the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill and particularly to talk about Vote Corrections—the money we are committing to spend on our prisons over the next 12 months. It is interesting to note that the amount assigned this year is in the order of $1.2 billion or $1.3 billion which is in line with what we saw last year but it is worthwhile going back 10 or 11 years when the budget for the Department of Corrections was to the tune of perhaps $460 million.Vote Corrections has increased by some 250 percent over 10 or 11 years—two and a half times more money is being spent this year than we spent a little over a decade ago. Increases of that order are not only unsustainable they are unacceptable given that one would think that the expenditure of all that extra money would be leading to better outcomes from our prison system but sadly that is not the case. We are seeing outcomes that are no better and indeed in many situations are actually worse than theywere 10 or 12 years ago. We need to ask some serious questions about why this considerable expenditure of public money is not producing better results.We saw a very graphic example this weekend just past of a corrections system in turmoil. We saw a major prison one of our newer prisons with serious fires burning and with 30-odd prisoners running amok. We saw a number of guards injured and a number of inmates injured. We saw lives put at risk—and I must take this moment to acknowledge the work of the corrections staff the firefighters the police and others who were obliged to go into harm’s way to try to settle that very unfortunate situation.You might dismiss this event as a one-off event but the outbreak of violence at Spring Hill Corrections Facility was actually one in a series of events and these events these violent outbursts are becoming much more frequent in our prison system. Going back to the middle of last year we saw two major incidents at Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison of prisoners protesting breaking out and setting fires. At Pāremoremo similarly about a year ago prisoners were barricading themselves in a tower trying to draw attention to the absence of response to their legitimate complaints. At Ngāwhā prison last year we saw several rubbish fires and damage to cells. At Rangipō prison a few months ago in March this year prisoners were protesting about poor conditions. In April this year we saw two incidents: one was when prisoners were fighting amongst themselves and then there was an assault on guards a few days later. Two weeks ago there was a serious stabbing at Pāremoremo and now we have had a major riot at Spring Hill.These are not isolated incidents; these are indicative of a system in turmoil. We are spending a great deal of money but we are not getting good outcomes. A lot of the reason for that can be sheeted home to the general culture the attitude over the previous two decades. There is more and more of a punitive culture in our prisons. There is much more of this nonsensical political contest to be seen as being tough on crime which actually means being tough on our communities because ultimately inmates in our prisons with very few exceptions are returned to the wider society. To the extent that we treat inmates poorly do not respect their human rights and do not provide humane conditions in our prisons inevitably we will see the knock-on effect of that when these people come back into our communities brutalised dehumanised paranoid and wanting to strike back at the system that has struck them.We need to do a great deal better. The money assigned in this Budget is sufficient to do better. We do not need to spend more money; we need to spend it differently.There is one obvious place to spend that—there is one safety valve in our prisons one opportunity for prisoners to attempt to have their rights and their conditions respected and that is the complaints process. We know the complaints procedure which is an internal process managed within the corrections department is failing badly. We are seeing too many complaints going directly to the Ombudsman. The Office of the Ombudsmen is being overwhelmed with quite low level prisoner complaints because there is no confidence within the prisons and within the families. Those who know what is happening in our prisons know that the internal complaints system is failing. The Ombudsman is being over burdened. That would be one very good place to start making a difference to get a system that works.