Borrows Chester: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBorrows Chester: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17371. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Associate Minister of Justice): It is encouraging to have this level of debate. I am sorry I did not get quickly enough off my butt to answer while we were discussing the previous part. The two questions were about the consistency between the bill currently before the Law and Order Committee the Parole Amendment Bill and this bill the Victims of Crime Reform Bill. I can assure the member Phil Goff that there is no conflict between those two and we will not be running back like we did under all Governments—let us be honest here—and doing little tart-ups later on down the track. So consistency is there.The next question that the member asked was about why victims did not avail themselves of the opportunity to appear before parole hearings. He touched on one reason which was that frequently the victim just wanted to put things behind them and did not want to re-engage. The other part of it though is that a lot of the way that people reflect on the criminal justice system is from a position of ignorance. It is not their fault. I do not mean any malice by saying that. It is just that people watch a lot of TV and they expect that what they see before them in the little square box is similar to the reality of dealing with our criminal justice system and that just is not the case. To try to get around that with the implementation of the code that we have been talking about over the course of this evening all victims will be made aware and completely aware of what it will entail—for instance the ability to be able to take part in a parole hearing without having to be confronted by or sit in the same room as the defendant. The fact that they can do that remotely or that their evidence can be taken at a time that is much more convenient to them and put before the members of the parole board I think is a very very important thing.I must say that people whom I know who have appeared in front of a parole hearing and made submissions have actually found an incredible gathering of strength from that process. I can recall that one of my constituents came to me wanting my assistance when an offender who had tried to murder her was coming up for parole. Unfortunately although I was a member of Parliament I was also the investigating officer in charge of preparing that file for court so I was prevented from being able to go along and make submissions or make any representation.Hon Maryan Street: Do you spot a conflict of interest?Hon CHESTER BORROWS: Yes we spied a conflict. What we managed to do then was draft a complete submission towards the Parole Board and one of the things that she asked for was the ability to be able to have a restorative justice conference with both offenders who had tried to kill her. What she found from that process was an incredible strengthening of her resolve and of her ability to be sure that she did not needto maintain any fear of these people and just the ability to be able to have her say. So I would encourage all victims to reflect on what they might gain from appearing before a Parole Board or any restorative justice process.The next question that the member asked was about resourcing and all I can really say there is that it is more good news. In our last Budget the Government doubled the amount of money available for restorative justice conferences made a priority of pre-sentence restorative justice conferencing and got contracts to make sure that every court in the country was covered by it so any victim of a crime right around New Zealand would now have the ability to access restorative justice conferencing without any cost to themselves. Also what we are extending which we have not really done so much in the past is restorative justice availability in prisons—so pre-release. Although that has been available on the request of the offender we are in a bit of a bind here because you cannot drag the offender into a restorative justice conference and make him—usually him—sit there. In fact there has to be an agreement from both parties to be able to do that. So the offender may well request a restorative justice conference but the victim might not want it so it does not take place and vice versa. The victim may well want to have a restorative justice conference but the offender may not want that to take place.There are some places within prisons where it has occurred through the provision of the Sycamore Tree project which made restorative justice available to people in prisons on a purely voluntary basis and provided by prison fellowship. Here if the victim of the offender was not prepared to take part in the restorative justice conference then a victim of a similar crime—a surrogate in effect—who was happy to appear before the conference would explain to the offender the similarities of the crime the way that he or she felt having been abused etc. etc. There has been some good that has come from that albeit it is not the actual victim and obviously there are times when it cannot be the actual victim.So yes I can assure the Hon Phil Goff that there is consistency between the two bills as he sought. I have explained why some victims do not want to appear before Parole Boards but encourage them to do so because it may well be to their benefit. I can assure him that there is sufficient resourcing for the extension of restorative justice conferencing which is now available for the first time throughout New Zealand in every court.