Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker and thank you for this opportunity to contribute to the third readings of the bills arising from the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill. As we have heard the bill was divided at the Committee stage into the Corrections (Electronic Monitoring of Offenders) Amendment Bill the Parole (Electronic Monitoring of Offenders) Amendment Bill and the Sentencing (Electronic Monitoring of Offenders) Amendment Bill. Labour does support these particular pieces of legislation. I think it is worth reiterating why this legislation was required and whom it is actually relevant to. Electronic monitoring is about providing for people who either are exiting prison or under this legislation have had intensive supervision imposed on them. It will also now cover people who are being released from prison who have a sentence of 2 years or less. Currently those people are not eligible for electronic monitoring and in fact that represents 5800 prisoners in our justice system. Currently we have 2000 people who have electronic monitoring devices in the community so this piece of legislation could potentially double if not treble the number of people in our community who are undergoing electronic monitoring. The extension of the eligibility is really about transitioning people out of prison and enabling us to feel secure as a public that those people who may have had to stay in prison for a little bit longer are actually monitored in some form. The definition of electronic monitoring is really interesting and I will read it. It is: a general term referring to forms of surveillance with which to monitor the location movement and specific behaviour of persons in the framework of the criminal justice [system]." I would particularly like to draw to the House's attention in this the third readings someone whom I have tremendous respect for and that is Kim Workman who made a submission on behalf of the Robson Hanan Trust for the Rethinking Crime and Punishment project. He did have some reservations about electronic monitoring and the expansion of electronic monitoring as a tool for releasing prisoners into the community. From his perspective if electronic monitoring became an end in itself and we did not ensure that prisoners who were released were released with a proper reintegration strategy and adequate support then this legislative measure was actually not going to help with reducing the rates of reoffending. What we do know particularly for Māori is that 5 years after release unfortunately 81 percent of Māori who have been in prison actually reoffend and end up in prison again. If this piece of legislation and electronic monitoring serve to address that issue then obviously we as parliamentarians would have thought that this piece of legislative reform is exactly what we want to achieve in terms of setting some aims and objectives of reducing reoffending. The stated objective is to reduce reoffending by 25 percent. So what we hope is that in addition to electronic monitoring when people are released they are actually released to a home—that they have somewhere to go to. There have been some pilots recently—and I did not realise that 20 percent of prisoners actually are in there because of driving issues. Whether it be licensing issues or whether it be fines that they have not paid—for some of them it is dangerous driving—20 percent of our prison population is there because of driving issues. We would hope that when people are released into the community having an opportunity to get their driver's licence is something that we would also provide as well as drug and alcohol counselling if that is what they need and education and employment opportunities. It is worth noting at the third readings that these were some of the discussions we had at the Law and Order Committee particular in respect of submissions by Dr Kim Workman. I would also like to note that there was a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issue about this piece of legislation and that related to people who had been released on extended supervision orders. That particular terminology is really important because the people released on extended supervision orders have been released after they have completed their sentence. These are high-risk sex offenders and very high-risk violent offenders who have to be released back into the community. We have to release them because they have served their time. For this particular group the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act contention was that we were actually limiting their freedom of movement and in some ways requiring them to then be electronically monitored was double jeopardy. However the Law and Order Committee and this House have seen fit to say that that limitation for this particular group was justified because of the threat that they pose to the community. People have talked about a few instances in this House. I think the bigger issue really is about sentencing—whether people are being sentenced adequately—and the other part of the equation is about whether people are being rehabilitated adequately. Those will be the continued challenges I believe to the justice system within that specific context. But overall I think we have had a fairly robust debate and discussion about this piece of legislation. I think there are still challenges about the actual bracelets themselves—how effective they are. Obviously some of my colleagues have highlighted members of the public who have been able cut through those bracelets. I think that overall as a Parliament we are supporting the use of technology. But from our perspective—and I think this is a good point to restate—technology has to be coupled with rehabilitation with reintegration strategies and actually with supporting prisoners when they are released into the community to make sure that if that is their first time in prison then it is actually their last. Kia ora."