Mapp Wayne: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — First Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:622;Page:18000] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I certainly would not regard that last speech as exhaustive or thorough. But I must say that I did appreciate Mr Alexander’s speech. He has put a lot of thought into the material and weighed the balance and United Future will vote for the bill. He feels—and I suppose in some respect so does National—that we do not have a great deal of choice because there is the opportunity for the select committee to repair the damage of this bill. National’s position is clear: there should be no monetary compensation for prisoners under any circumstances. That is not to say there should be no remedies but we are clear on this: there should be no money for prisoners under any circumstances. 
That is not the appropriate remedy because that is not the loss they have suffered. In fact it leads to bizarre and perverse results. It can result in the absurd proposition that victims might want the prisoner to get money because that then gives them an avenue to get it themselves. Why on earth would we put victims through such a ludicrous lottery? The Victims’ Rights Act was dealt with by Parliament some 3 years ago and National saw major deficiencies in it and so did Mr Marc Alexander who contributed to that as well. 
One of those deficiencies is the very very limited statutory regime for monetary compensation for victims. New Zealand lags behind in that area particularly compared with Australia and I know that for a fact because members of my immediate family have had the direct experience of compensation for the effects of a crime—in fact a serious assault—in Australia. We do not have that here so we have the bizarre position of the victims’ rights legislation not having an adequate mechanism with which to compensate victims. However in this situation in the event that an offender’s rights might be transgressed there is the opportunity for the victim to get compensation on a truly random basis. How would any victim know in advance whether his or her particular offender is likely to have some form of grievance? 
When we look at the cases that were involved this happened with the very worst offenders because they are the ones who come to the attention of the prison authorities. They are the ones against whom the prison authorities have to take special measures. We heard from the previous speaker of the incredibly egregious behaviour of offenders that led them into the punishment regime. Ordinary offenders do not get there. They have to be particularly bad violent unruly or difficult before that happens. All of that brings the offender to the attention of the prison authorities and then they go through the behavioural change regime I guess they would call it. 
It is in the application of that regime that the alleged defaults occurred which then caused the judge to award compensation of up to $130000. In this scenario the worst offenders in jail—who had committed the crimes the ones who caused the most difficulty to the prison authorities and indeed to other prisoners—were the ones who went through the regime that then led to the claim for which the judges awarded compensation. On that lottery the victim then has a right to those funds. It is an absurd proposition— 
Hon Georgina te Heuheu 
: A lottery! 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: But it is a bizarre lottery. It is a lottery based on bad behaviour—bad behaviour by the offender actually because that is what initiates the whole process. So as a matter of principle it seems fundamentally wrong that prisoners would get compensation that then leads to victims getting compensation. It is wrong in principle on that basis. I do look forward to the select committee trying to deal with what is frankly an absurd conundrum that they face. 
Now maybe what they should be doing is going back to first principles and asking: “How do we compensate victims more effectively?”. Because that is after all much of the motivation of this legislation. How do we ensure that victims get properly compensated? Well the answer to that is to actually look at the victims’ rights legislation not this particular legislation. 
Mr Marc Alexander said that he felt forced to accept the reality that prisoners would get monetary compensation. I would not like to misrepresent Mr Alexander but that is what I understood him to say. I say that that is incorrect. The international conventions do not require that. The Attorney-General has to consent to that sort of thing. We could on a statutory basis essentially say: “No consent end of story.” 
I want to make it perfectly clear: National clearly wants proper regimes to ensure that prisoners are not mistreated. There is a range of options to do that as the Deputy Prime Minister would well acknowledge. That range of options does not need to include monetary compensation. For instance and this would be in the nature of a hierarchy one can have administrative disciplinary procedures in relation to staff. That does happen from time to time—people get demoted in a position and things of that nature. For more serious matters—and there have been a number of them—the staff would get prosecuted. They themselves would be punished for egregious breaches of the law. There might be more general retraining of staff—a clearer understanding of how to manage prisons. 
Finally of course and this has arguably been one of the more serious breaches in this area there has been a lack of accountability by senior officials. When one gets a culture occurring as seems to have occurred in a number of prisons where quite a large number of staff have been prosecuted dismissed or engaged in completely inappropriate behaviour with prisoners—it would be fair to say in some cases with the prisoners consent but I will not go down that line too far—then one knows that something is fundamentally flawed in relation to the management. So the management needs to be held accountable. 
Ministers need to hold their senior executives accountable. This is after all and the Government consistently says it a core State function. Therefore Ministers have direct responsibility and accountability. And when one gets a pattern of behaviour the buck actually stops with the Minister. Members might say: “That’s all very well you deal with the problem of the staff but how does that help the prisoner?”. Well the way it helps the prisoner when his or her rights have been offended is that the breaches stop. That is the remedy for the prisoner. The breach of the law stops and they are correctly treated. I think it was Mr Franks earlier in the debate who said that they have not suffered a monetary loss so therefore why should they receive monetary compensation? 
I shall expand on that point slightly. The Government sort of argues that there has to be monetary compensation to sheet home the level of responsibility and to truly sheet home to the Department of Corrections the level of responsibility. That is simply false. There are other ways to sheet home responsibility. I would guess that the prospects of job security would have to be the most important thing and more important than that are the risks and prospects of prosecutions. What do the guards in Abu Ghraib fear at the moment? They do not fear that the prisoners might get monetary compensation in Iraq. They fear that they will be court-martialled. I return to the fundamental proposition. There should be no monetary compensation for prisoners. It is not necessary. Furthermore it is wrong to put victims through that lottery. The problem is the legislation itself. That needs to be fixed so that victims are properly compensated.