Paul Tamatha; Mitchell MarkTAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Kia ora Mr Chair thank you. I note your point about not going back and repeating information so I've got a number of questions around the use of body image scanning technology some questions around the increased monitoring and surveillance that happens through this bill and then if I have time I'd like to ask some questions about the mixing of adult and youth populations within prison. So starting with the body image scanning technology we are supportive of introducing this technology as a way to reduce the need for rubdown and strip searches within prison and my question to the Minister on the body image scanning technology is: what other steps can we take to eventually remove the need for rubdown and strip searches? I ask that because when I was reading the Turiki! Turiki! report by the Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group there was a statistic in there that said that 53 percent of women in prison have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime and 15 percent of men in prison have experienced sexual violence within their lifetime. We can take those as conservative figures understanding the under-reporting of instances of sexual harm. The reason I raised those statistics is because it's clear that the experience of sexual violence is prevalent within our prison population and that things like strip searches and rubdown searches can be retriggering and re-traumatising for people who have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. So what ways can we move away from those strip searches and rubdown searches? I also note the statement within the regulatory impact statement for the bill: staff at sites where imaging technology has been deployed report that it is harder to get unauthorised items into prison when body imaging technology is used compared to strip and rubdown searches. Staff also report that physical searches can lead to prisoners becoming upset and confrontational reducing staff safety. So we are supportive of moving towards this technology but what are some of the barriers that prisons are experiencing in terms of introducing that technology? I read in the regulatory impact statement that there are obviously privacy concerns around the use of that technology and the collection and disposal of those images. So keen to hear some more about how this bill makes that technology more prevalent throughout our prisons but I'm also really interested in the disposal of those images too given they are quite intimate—you know taking imaging of somebody's body—and how those will be disposed of particularly given there have been some concerns around the way that say police officers for example collect images of people and how they dispose of those noting the case around thousands tens of thousands of images of young Māori being collected by police officers and not disposed of adequately in line with the provision set out within the Privacy Act. So those are my questions around body image scanning. The next point that I wanted to move into is around surveillance and monitoring and I'm really interested to understand how the Minister has been able to balance the ability of people in prison to maintain their connections with people on the outside and balance that with the importance of anticipating any risks to people in prison and noting the submission from the Law Society which talks about increasing powers to enable monitoring of in person visits raises privacy issues. One of the guiding principles within the bill is that contact between prisoners and their families must be encouraged and supported so far as is reasonable and practicable and within the resources available and the extent that this contact is consistent with the maintenance of safety and security requirements. Now we know that people in prison having connection to their communities and their whānau and their friends is an important part of the rehabilitation process. They need to understand that people care for them and have expectations of them; they need to maintain these relationships in order to be able to reflect on their behaviour and their actions and to address that and to change that. But I guess what I'm concerned about is that increased monitoring and surveillance might reduce the ability for prisoners to have that connection even though that's a core principle within the bill. In the People against Prisons Aotearoa submission they stated incarceration is an isolating experience and separation from family and whānau is a significant stressor on the mental wellbeing of incarcerated people. So how can we maintain those connections with these new provisions and not put in unfair—[Time expired]Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Corrections): Yes thank you Mr Chair. Look really good question around technology; obviously we're fully committed to that. We want to continue to roll technology out; we want to try and get away from as much as possible physical searches and strip searches. But you're never going to be able to eliminate them completely because unfortunately you are an environment—you're dealing with people that are very inventive around the way they get contraband into the prison that not only puts prison officers or corrections officers at risk but fellow prisoners as well.So in terms of the images the images are kept for 24 hours and then automatically deleted. The only one that sees the image is the person that's actually operating the scanners at the time.