Tanczos Nandor: Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16170] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I would like first of all to thank my colleague Sue Bradford for bringing this bill before the House. I also thank the different parties in the House for their support—I think that that support is now universal—and all the previous speakers for their universally thoughtful and considered contributions to this debate. It is an important issue and it goes to the heart of how we see the criminal justice system. It seems there is a general abhorrence across the House for the practice reported by some inmates that access to their babies and breastfeeding rights are being used as a disciplinary and control measure by some Department of Corrections staff. 
It seems that there is recognition across the House of the importance of contact between mothers and babies both for the well-being of the babies and to enhance the rehabilitative prospects for the mothers. It seems also that there is a general recognition that in relation to mothers with babies the justice policy needs to humanise rather than dehumanise—not just to rehabilitate but in the words of the Roper report to habilitate. 
So although I welcome the support for this bill I think it is worth extending that thinking that approach a little bit further and having a look at how a more humanised approach might improve the prospects not just of imprisoned mothers and their babies but of imprisoned women and men more generally. We in this country have the second-highest rate of imprisonment in the Western World after the United States. We know that some 80 percent of inmates reoffend within 3 years of release. For young people offending tends to become more serious once they have entered the prison system and bizarrely given those facts we know that over half of the prison population is inside for non-violent offences. So although I agree with Mr Goff that sometimes prison may be the only appropriate sentence and in particular where there is a need for containment to ensure the safety of others I have to say that that condition occurs far less often than prison sentences do. 
The rate of imprisonment in New Zealand is just too high. We need to look at a better way forward and many of the ingredients of that way forward are already clear to us. A number of speakers have referred to the increased use of home detention for mothers with dependent children and I support that. Judy Turner made the point that we need to look at sentencing because if we consider that mothers are safe to look after their babies in prison it would seem on the face of it that there is a good case to say that a community sentence would be appropriate. 
But it actually goes much further than that. We need to move much further in reforming the criminal justice system if we want to see something that works all around. Meaningful recognition and support for the needs of victims of crime is crucial both to improve the system for victims of crime and because it can have rehabilitative value as well. The recent Justice and Electoral Committee report offers a number of ways forward on that including better use of and greater access to restorative justice as a key alternative justice path. 
We need to see better access to mental health services in the community and in custody and a full implementation of the mental health blueprint. We know there are high numbers of untreated mental illness among inmates and offenders. We need to see substantially better provision of addiction treatment services for gambling and for alcohol and other drugs both in the community and in custody and in particular in youth residential facilities. 
In particular we need to see much more focus on early intervention at community family and individual levels. We need to strengthen families and parenting skills promote non-violence and effective communication skills and address poverty poor housing truancy and school suspensions. Those last few are actually vitally important. Judge Becroft has said that the single biggest thing we can do to deter youth offending—and by implication later adult offending—is to keep young people in education. Yet many of our schools still see the expulsion of young people as the easy way out in the face of sometimes relatively minor problems. The Court of Appeal case taken by Lynfield College is I think a demonstration of that mentality. 
Even for those in prison we can do much much more in providing addiction treatment employment guidance and reintegration strategies such as maintaining healthy connections with family and community and other initiatives. This bill is obviously one step in that direction towards greater reintegration of people in prison. Again I thank Sue Bradford for the bill. I thank members for their support of the bill and I hope that all parties will continue to demonstrate the same insight that they have shown on this bill on wider justice policy issues. 
Bill read a second time.