Clendon David: Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8193. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 The Greens will continue to oppose the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. The principle that underpins it seems to be one of passively accepting that the number of people in our prisons will continue to increase. This is deemed to be inevitable apparently. The prison forecasts suggest that current capacity will be exhausted from June 2010 presumably even with the imposition of the very dangerous and undesirable practice of double-bunking which has been flagged for some of our prisons. The corrections officers at the sharp end of this debate are resisting this option as well they might given that they will suffer the inevitable negative consequences in terms of the safety and security of both staff and inmates. Given the date of June 2010 as the crisis point it is surprising and I have to say disappointing that our Labour colleagues—who have made some very strong well-informed and powerful statements opposing this bill—nevertheless choose to support it. There is still time for a proper process to engage decently and properly with this issue. We have according to these documents until June of next year to have a proper process around this matter. 
The regulatory impact statement accompanying the bill notes that the option of using court cells to accommodate overflow prisoners has been used during periods of acute accommodation shortage. The word “acute” suggests something unexpected and short term. Here we have in fact a long-term and chronic problem that demands a long-term vision a long-term strategy and some decent investment in real solutions. The bill is a classic band-aid solution—or an attempt at a solution—and it does not even pretend to address the long-term chronic issues and problems that demand urgent attention. 
Court cells are designed to properly house people in custody while they are appearing in court. They are designed for short stays and as such they have never been designed or constructed to provide the level of basic facility or to meet the minimum requirements of longer stay prisoners. My colleague Sue Kedgley who has been supported in a number of the Labour speeches has identified the very basic issues. How will prisoners’ meals be delivered and prepared? What toilet and bathroom facilities will be available to them? What facilities will there be to provide for family visits or other support? Where will prisoners exercise their right to physical exercise? How will prison staff be provided with adequate facilities as prescribed by their employment conditions? How will rehabilitation programmes—which are invariably highly sensitive to interruption and depend on a carefully staged managed and sustained engagement—be sustained or maintained? 
We are asked to simply accept that administrative safeguards will be put in place to ensure that this wholly inappropriate treatment of prisoners will occur only if it is strictly necessary and that prisoners will continue to receive their statutory entitlements. This test of strict necessity is an interesting one and I wonder what criteria what indicators and what standards will be established against which this very vague and amorphous notion of strict necessity will be measured. The statutory entitlements of prisoners that are referred to in section 69 of the Corrections Act include entitlement to physical exercise to a bed and bedding to food and drink to access to private visitors to access to statutory visitors to access to legal advisers to receive medical treatment to send and receive mail and to be able to make outgoing phone calls. How will any of these statutory minimums be met in the context of a court cell? 
We are assured but by no means reassured that the normal functioning of the courts will not be compromised. An interesting experiment could demonstrate the veracity of that assumption. Perhaps we could require the courts and the police at one or two of our larger courts to function for a few days at a time without access to the court cells—let us just assume for the moment that those cells are full of long-term prisoners—and see what effect this has on the proper functioning of the court system which already works under considerable pressure. That fairly simple experiment would quite readily at no cost reveal the shortcomings of the propositions of this bill. 
Some reference has been made to the likelihood of transgressing the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We already have case law.  
Taunoa v Attorney-General 
 relates to a situation where it was deemed that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act had been contravened when a person who had been held in custody did not have a cell with sufficient standards of hygiene where bedding and clothing fell below standards established by prison regulations where there was inadequate monitoring of inmate mental health and where exercise conditions were inadequate. All of these conditions are likely to apply in court cells. Clearly we now have legal precedent that there will be responses and implications from those conditions. 
A rather sneaky mechanism in this bill that is being used to achieve its outcomes is an amendment to the Resource Management Act that overrides the authority of district plans. The Resource Management Act speaks of enabling people and communities to provide for their social economic and cultural well-being and for their health and safety. The processes of preparing and enacting district plans demand a very high level of public engagement. An absolute requirement is placed on territorial local authorities to hear and respond to the public’s views and incorporate their preferences into the plans. The plans themselves are very powerful and influential documents. They enable and constrain members of our communities in the use and development of natural and physical resource. It is critical to the ongoing success of the Resource Management Act regime that there is a high level of public confidence in the process of plan preparation and enactment. This very brief but pointed bill being pushed through under considerable urgency is a very shabby mechanism indeed that will almost certainly undermine people’s confidence in the integrity of the plan preparation and Resource Management Act processes more generally. 
Over many years I have been involved in a number of issues and disputes around provisions and processes related to the Resource Management Act and I know very well that in recognising its central and even unique ability to influence so much of our daily lives members of the public become highly engaged—and indeed passionate—about the content and the application of the legislation. The initial surprise of any community that has worked long and hard to get provisions that meet their needs and ambitions in the plan will very quickly turn to cynicism with the whole process to the extent that Parliament passes a bill such as this that very neatly circumvents the work done to make district plans operational. The complete absence of any consultation on this bill the lack of a select committee process—all of this signals to the public that this Government is willing and able to jam through legislation that will have negative social and indeed economic impacts and that the Government will provide absolutely no avenue for members of the public who will be affected to participate in the decision making. 
We do not actually need to surmise what the practice of putting prisoners into court cells will lead to. We have the benefit of overseas experience. There is a very interesting report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Court Administration in the UK dated 20 August 2007 where inspectors from the inspectorate visited court cells that were being used in the context of significant prison overcrowding. The report “raises serious concerns about the use of such cells.” which is exactly the practice that this bill is intended to facilitate. It highlights that “it is in the early days of custody that prisoners are most vulnerable:” and that most self-inflicted deaths occur within the first days yet none of the support systems to prevent these tragedies existed in court cells. There was a lack of any “proactive reception or healthcare screening” “Prisoners were being held in bare cells over a weekend with no activity no natural light … and with no exercise facilities” “Prisoners spent long periods travelling in cramped vans … often arriving late and having to leave early the next morning” “Prisoners could not contact their families”—indeed families of prisoners did not even know where their family member was—and “Shower facilities were inadequate and there was no opportunity for prisoners to change clothes so they slept in what they were wearing.” The inspectorate highlights that this was no shortcoming of the prisons or the court staff. 
This is an abysmal bill. It is a disgrace and the Green Party opposes it in its entirety.