Barker Rick: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee 
Barker Rick: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14140] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice) 
 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister of Justice 
: I move  
That the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. This bill was introduced in November 2003 to meet two objectives: firstly the establishment of an active management regime aimed at managing the long-term risks posed by child sex offenders and secondly to make minor amendments to the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act to bring the operation of those aspects of the Acts in line with the policy intentions. The active management regime creates a new legislative regime that will allow extended supervision orders to be imposed on child sex offenders who are assessed as likely to sexually victimise children once their sentence is finished.  
Although the United Kingdom and Canada have regimes that enable child sex offenders to be actively managed New Zealand authorities do not yet have such a regime. This bill enables offenders to be monitored for up to 10 years. How long the order is granted will be a decision for the court taking into account the need to protect the community in light of the offender's risk and the likely seriousness and duration of any risk. The Justice and Electoral Committee has recommended that the Department of Corrections may apply for an extension to the duration of the extended supervision in situations where the offender has breached the conditions of the order within the last 12 months. The maximum period of the order will remain at 10 years. However officials will continue to monitor international regimes and determine whether at some future time there may be a need to consider extending the maximum order permissible under the regime beyond 10 years. 
The select committee has also recommended that an order can be extended where the offender consents to the Department of Corrections making an application for extension for up to the 10-year maximum on the offender's behalf. Some offenders may wish to have the ongoing support that an order provides. The extended supervision regime will be limited in its application. It will apply only to eligible offenders subject to a finite sentence of imprisonment for a relevant offence. The bill as introduced was limited to actual sex offending against children but the select committee has extended it so that those convicted of an imprisonable child pornography offence under the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act will also be eligible for extended supervision orders. This amendment reiterates the abhorrence with which the Government and society regard the production distribution and possession of child pornography. The regime will apply only to eligible offenders who are assessed by the Department of Corrections as posing a high or medium-high risk of offending sexually against children. 
Where a court order is sought and made accepting that assessment the Parole Board will set conditions for supervision and monitoring of the offender. These conditions may include electronic monitoring to deter the offender from breaching any special conditions relating to whereabouts—for example a condition that a person not approach a school. 
The select committee has examined the appropriate safeguards that should govern the use of electronic monitoring and has recommended some amendments. These safeguards include firstly providing an explicit statement that the purpose of electronic monitoring is to deter offenders from breaching the conditions relating to their whereabouts and to monitor compliance; secondly limiting what information derived from electronic monitoring may be used. The information may be used to verify compliance or to detect non-compliance with conditions and to provide evidence of non-compliance with conditions and the commission of offences. The Department of Corrections will be required to include information on the use of electronic monitoring in its annual report. 
I intend to move the adoption of a Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee stage to introduce an amendment to the bill authorising information sharing between specified public sector agencies. This amendment is needed essentially to put beyond doubt that agencies may share information relating to a child sex offender for the purposes of monitoring the offender and reducing the risk of reoffending and that doing so will not be contrary to the Privacy Act. 
Issues related to this amendment were considered by the select committee and such an amendment was thought desirable. However the committee could not recommend the amendment because it was considered to be beyond the scope of the bill. A second Supplementary Order Paper will clarify some of the mechanical procedures around enforcement of orders and also remove the statutory limitation on the use of electronic monitoring for those on parole. The effect of that limitation as reported might be viewed as being more restrictive than had been intended. It is therefore preferable in the Government's view to remove it. 
Part 2 contains a number of amendments to the Sentencing Act and Parole Act to deal with minor matters. The amendments are either of a technical nature to fix up drafting errors or to bring the operation of particular provisions of the Act more closely into line with the Government's original policy intent. They include amendments to the provisions relating to home detention deferral of sentences and minimum terms of imprisonment. The committee's consideration of Part 2 did not result in many changes to the bill but the changes that have been recommended have further improved the drafting of some clauses. 
The committee has also taken the opportunity to address other minor matters that came to light after the introduction of the bill and made some necessary consequential amendments to the various prescribed forms. The Government has been concerned that deferred sentence start-dates were being granted too often in circumstances that did not meet the original policy expectation of being truly “out of the ordinary”. There was also concern that the bail conditions should be imposed where deferral was given to ensure that some degree of control was retained over the offender between sentencing and the commencement of the sentence. The select committee gave careful consideration to the change of the test for deferring the start-date of prison sentences from “special reasons” to “exceptional circumstances”. The commentary on the bill sets out examples that illustrate the policy intention underlying the deferral provision in cases where an offender’s employment may be lost. 
Changes are also being made to the granting of leave to apply for front-end home detention. The Government has been concerned about the number of cases being granted leave to apply for home detention and subsequently being declined home detention by the Parole Board because the offender was clearly unsuitable. That raised the question about whether an appropriate degree of discretion was being exercised at that first hurdle. The amendments to which no changes were recommended clarify and emphasise that the court has the primary role of determining whether wider sentencing considerations make home detention inappropriate. 
I thank the members of the Justice and Electoral Committee for their work on this bill. The committee addressed significant issues and had a positive influence on the shape of the bill as reported back. The Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill will provide a means for the supervision of high-risk child sex offenders in the community beyond the term that is currently possible. Children are amongst the most vulnerable in our society and the predatory and habitual nature of offending against them justifies the establishment of a special regime to help protect them. I look forward to the passage of this bill.