Young Jonathan: Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeYoung Jonathan: Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2045. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am very pleased to stand in support of the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill here in its first reading. I would say that this is a bill that New Zealanders would say is needed and is common sense. It seeks to strengthen and support the good work that the Department of Corrections is doing in our communities.There has been much debate over the years regarding the activities and behaviours of people on bail and the fact that they can while on bail continue to perpetrate crime. Certainly the same could be said of community-based offenders. This bill seeks to enable the Department of Corrections and the New Zealand Police to require community-based offenders and bailees who are subject to conditions prohibiting the use of drugs or alcohol to undergo drug and alcohol testing. That is common sense you would think. In many respects having a condition to bring these activities to the attention of those bailees and those community-based offenders—saying that you should not do it—but having no testing regime to support that means that that condition really cannot be enforced very effectively and in many respects it makes some of those conditions not effective.The reason some offenders and bailees will have conditions placed upon them is that drugs and/or alcohol were significant in contributing to their lawbreaking in the first instance. Therefore if we are serious about reducing recidivism—that is repeat offending—we have to address one of the significant causes for such reoffending and that is alcohol and drug use.Drug and alcohol use is a major driver of crime. The Department of Corrections reports to us that two-thirds of New Zealand prisoners have substance abuse problems and more than 50 percent of crime is committed by people under the influence of drugs and alcohol. What happens when somebody gets under the influence of drugs or alcohol is that their self-discipline starts to break down. Their judgment becomes impaired. Issues that might be below the surface come to the surface. Frustration anger bad decisions thoughtlessness and selfishness—all of these start to surface and become drivers in a person’s personality and actions. Fifty percent of people who commit crime do so while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. This is a significant problem that we face here in New Zealand. By tackling this issue we can contribute to people leading an offence-free life once they leave prison or complete their community sentence.As a party our goals are clear and direct. We want to introduce alcohol and drug testing where being drug and alcohol - free is a condition of bail home detention or other community sentences to help ensure that conditions are being met. It is important in a society based on the rule of law to ensure that our laws can be properly administered monitored and obeyed. All of these people end up with community-based sentences or in prison and come out on bail because they have broken the law of this land. We need to not only help them to not do that while they are under the supervision of corrections but we want to assist them in a life change.Having alcohol and drug testing for those people who have that alcohol or drug - free status as part of their condition of bail seems to be a very logical and a very sensible thing to do. Where offenders are back in our communities we want to support them to stay away from the driver of crime that they have faced in the past and we also want to keep our communities safe. It seems nonsensical that we would insist on this while they are under the supervision of the Department of Corrections yet when they leave that supervision they have no support in our communities. I know there are great organisations out there that do support these people.This bill also supports National’s Better Public Services goal which is to see a 25 percent reduction in reoffending by 2017. Those are very noble and aspirational goals some may say yet we are nearly halfway there to achieving this simply because the Department of Corrections is applying great effort and intelligence to the issues that cause people to offend. Much of this of course is around addiction and the fact that people who have alcoholism or drug addiction have their lives impaired in all sorts of different ways with the outcome as I said before that they are perpetuating crime. If we see this 25 percent reduction in reoffending by 2017 it will mean 4600 fewer offenders returning to prison and 18500 fewer victims. What a fantastic result it will be when we see that.It takes measures like this to ensure that we can achieve those goals. We cannot just sit on our chuffs and hope. We cannot just cross our fingers and hope that we will get to this goal and that society will improve. We have to put measures in place and that requires legislation that will change things and bring greater accountability but will also give greater support to those people who struggle with these addictions to alcohol and drugs.At the moment the police and corrections staff are trying to ensure that offenders and bailees comply with drug and alcohol conditions but they are limited in what they can do. Current legislation does not give them clear authority to test offenders or bailees so what this bill does is it clarifies that and gives them that authority. This bill is a legislative mandate for alcohol and drug testing of eligible offenders and bailees.I want to read a quote from the Guardian newspaper in the UK on the topic of treatment of prisoners’ alcoholism. It says this: “But tackling prisoners’ drink problems would have a hugely beneficial impact on recidivism reducing crime rates and easing the burden on our overcrowded prisons. In evidence to the commission the chief constable of Northamptonshire police Adrian Lee said the impact of alcohol crime on police is ‘huge’ and described the possibility of inmates leaving prison dry as a great window of opportunity ‘to catch them sober and offer the help and support they need’.”Imagine if this were to happen in New Zealand and we were to see a former prison population that could deal with their alcoholism and substance abuse and if those who are on community-based sentences who had alcohol and drug problems could become free of that. How much would we save in our corrections facilities? How much would it take the pressure off our police force? How many families would be better off? How many kids would not suffer the effect of domestic violence? All of these things are important if we want to see a better and healthier society and if we want to see the taxpayers’ investments made for positive change to build and uplift our society. I am very happy to commend this bill to the House.