Dalziel Lianne: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — In Committee 
Dalziel Lianne: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:663;Page:10923] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I have not spoken on this part at all so I am looking forward to several calls and to contributing to this debate in a constructive way. 
I went and listened to two presentations given by two different people who have recently come from California to New Zealand. One was the judge from the court that has to administer the “three strikes” law and the other was Rev. Ron Givens. One thing that I thought was quite fascinating was the definition of the legislation as it is defined as “three strikes”. It was a point that I had not heard before. Of course that expression comes from America’s favourite game but it does not mean what it means when one is playing baseball. When playing baseball “three strikes” means that someone is out but can come back in the next round and that person could hit the home run that wins the game. But that is not what this bill is all about. It is not about people redeeming and rehabilitating themselves and contributing to society in a meaningful way. My real fundamental problem with this legislation is that it is a one-size-fits-all approach that uses populist slogans that do not mean anything. 
I have heard people talk about the experience in California in respect of the crime rate. In fact there are many other justifications for changes in crime rates. It was already going down before the “three strikes” law came into effect. One of the points they made was that the increase in violence against prison guards was exponential. When people do not have any chance of ever seeing the light of day again it becomes a more dangerous occupation. The other one which I had not thought of was violence to police if someone is sitting on two strikes with that third strike pending and he or she is about to be arrested. One example we were given was of an individual who was facing the third strike. In California the “three strikes” system is even more repressive than this particular regime because it applies to offences that are not that serious and it applies forever. If someone had a bad youth and went off the rails then later on in life committed that third strike he or she could face consequences that are way beyond what anyone else would face for that particular offence in any other set of circumstances. 
The other thing that I thought was fascinating and I have not been able to track this down yet but I will definitely have it available for my third reading contribution to this debate is that apparently a chief executive officer of one of the private prisons was quoted in  
Business Week 
 as saying that mandated sentencing—because that is what “three strikes” is; it takes away discretion from judges and tells judges that they can only do things a certain way—provided exciting growth opportunities in the private prison industry. I thought that was fascinating because National introduced the private prison industry to New Zealand. When we add the two together we start to see that this makes sense from a profit-making provision. It plays on people’s fears of being victimised. 
One of the examples given to us was of a 16-year-old who had stolen two cheques from his mother by forging her name which is cheque fraud. He had stolen two cheques so that is two counts and he was convicted on the two counts which were both felonies. Last year when he was 20 years old he went into a convenience store and stole a candy bar. He turned to the shop owner— 
David Garrett 
: What was his name? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Every time I get up to speak I am constantly asked to give names. I do not know the name of this person; it is an example of a case that was given to us in a presentation. The individual involved made a suggestion that that member contact him because he would love to have the debate directly with that member. 
David Garrett 
: I offered to debate him while he was here. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: No I do not think we are talking about the same person. Last year when he was 20 years old he went into a convenience store and stole a candy bar. He turned to the shop owner and said: “I’m going to kill you if you tell anyone I did this.” Of course he was arrested. His sentence was 25 years to life. He had stolen those two cheques from his mother then he stole a candy bar. 
He also made this point which I thought was very fascinating in light of the issues we deal with with constituents who have lost money in major scams and major white-collar crime. What is missing from the list of crimes? Bribery fraud pandering—all of the white-collar crimes are left out of this. This will fill our jails with young Maori men. That is the bottom line. 
In America when an analysis was done it was discovered that 36 percent of those in prison had an underlying mental illness—36 percent. That did not include those who had drug and alcohol issues that required treatment. When we think about what that might mean we start to think about the warehousing in our criminal justice system of prisoners with mental illness who require treatment instead of a more caring and understanding society. 
Every time we have this debate we are accused of being either soft or hard on crime. I do not think that that is the debate we should have. There are some people who are so dangerous they should be locked up for ever. I have no problems with that and I do not think anyone has any problems with that. All of the speakers who have come to this country to tell us not to go down this track have said that as well. There are some people who are criminal evil and unable to be rehabilitated. There is no hope for them. They should be catered for in a humane way and they should never be allowed to rejoin society. We all accept that but this says that on three separate occasions at any time in one’s life no matter the circumstances this is how the law will be applied in one’s case. It does not matter that a judge might have some discretion that would normally apply. We will take the judge’s discretion away and we will mandate a sentence regardless of the circumstances. That is the fundamental problem with this particular legislation. It does not deal with the real problem. 
The real problem can be dealt with by addressing those who commit serious crimes who cannot be rehabilitated. The effort has to go in at the front end as well so that we can do the early intervention work to make the difference. We on this side of the House have offered to work collaboratively with the Government on early intervention policy and we have not had a positive response. I would have thought that any Government would want to work with an Opposition in order to achieve those things to make the difference in the long term. We do not have to worry about beating on the law and order drum if we are serious about doing something that will make a difference in the long term. Unless we are prepared to look at early intervention early childhood education Child Youth and Family and all of those different areas— 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: ACC sexual abuse counselling. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: We need to look at all of those things and at what some of those underlying causes are. This does not excuse the behaviour but if we do not understand what drives the behaviour how on earth will we do anything as a Parliament to stand up to the things that will make a difference in terms of reducing the numbers of victims of crimes? I think that would be preferable.