Faafoi Kris: Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Faafoi Kris: Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 08 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2050. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 I say to Mr Ross that maybe it is the super moon; maybe it is the super moon that has changed our opinions of the Government so much that we think we should support this piece of legislation but it is true that this is one of those rare occasions where the moon is shining bright and a number of parties other than ACT and National support a piece of National legislation. So we can be forgiven if our balance is maybe a bit thrown off by the unusual tides of the super moon and the fact that we are supporting this piece of legislation.  
At the risk of an interjection by the Hon Simon Bridges about my having a record I would just like to clarify for the House that I have been in court only once and that was for my inability to pay a fine for not having lights on my bicycle in the early 1990s. So I just want to clarify that for Mr Bridges. I have been to court once but I got away without having to pay that fine because I was only 16 or 17 years of age.  
Labour does support this Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill. It is a relatively technical bill and it amends three Acts as has been mentioned before. It amends the Bail Act the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act. There are 50ish amendments in total. As the Hon Phil Goff mentioned earlier in the debate this bill makes these amendments to ensure that we can do away with some barriers and ensure there is more effective management of community sentences and orders. As it stands now the three Acts that cover this area are either silent or unclear on a number of areas around community sentences or home detention orders. We need to do away with the farcical situation that Phil Goff mentioned before whereby if someone is on home detention and then scarpers that time when they are missing in action still counts towards their sentence. For those technical reasons we are supporting this bill.  
Labour does support a corrections system that secures the public safety and of course there are only certain types of offenders who can be eligible for a non-prison sentence. We support that position. We also support ensuring the rehabilitation of offenders. As Mr Goff mentioned in his earlier contribution there is a much better rate of non-recidivism for those who have home detention sentences and community sentences and orders than for those who have short prison terms.  
The barriers that are in the current legislation really impinge on Department of Corrections staff and hopefully this bill will help the department’s staff and the judiciary to effectively deal better with offenders who are given non-custodial sentences. There has been a huge increase in the use of non-custodial sentences. I understand it is slowing down as of late but in 2006 to the year to June I understand there were 33965 non-custodial community sentences handed down. In the year to June 2011 that number had increased to 63168—a doubling of those sentencing options around non-custodial community sentences. Home detention also received a similar increase. In the year to June 2006 1293 home detention sentences were handed out but in the year to June 2011 over 3700 home detention sentences had been handed out. So this bill is an important piece of legislation in terms of the context of the increasing use of the non-custodial sentence. Hopefully the changes within this bill will ensure that in terms of the way we deal with these offenders we can be much more efficient and effective.  
There is a relatively good fiscal argument as to why we should be looking to non-custodial sentences for offenders who are low risk. At the moment the taxpayer pays around about $58 per day to keep someone in home detention and that is roughly a quarter of what it costs to keep someone in prison the cost of which is $249 per day. So it is fiscally responsible to examine a widening of the use of home detention rather than dismissing it. Some see it as not being tough on crime and certain people who are out there in the community say we should be locking people up more and more often but they should take note of the fiscal argument as to why we should not be locking more people up.  
We also need to ask the question as to why we convict and sentence people. We do it to punish them if they have transgressed against the law. We take away their freedom and that is a relatively serious punishment. While they are either in prison or they are serving a home detention order or another order we ask them to ponder their actions and to see the error of their ways and hopefully they can think in the future they might modify their behaviour. We also should be dealing with any issues that they may have whether they be within their family or mental health issues or behavioural issues. But I think most Kiwis would agree that when people transgress they should be punished whether by a custodial or a non-custodial sentence.  
We also want to make sure that these people do not reoffend. Recidivism is something that both this Government and Judith Collins have said we have to put a lot more emphasis on in terms of rehabilitation. But in that respect the rhetoric does not necessarily match up with the reality. Mr Goff mentioned earlier on about the great success of home detention sentences around recidivism. Between 2007 and 2008 the number of those who got home detention sentences who were reconvicted in the next 12 months was at 21.5 percent. For the next year it was 23 percent. But for those who were serving relatively similar short-term prison sentences in the same years the reconviction rate was 50.3 percent and 52.6 percent in 2008 and 2009. So it shows you there that the use of home detention orders and community sentences is much more effective in terms of reducing the rates of recidivism for those who are subject to those sentences.  
 In terms of the rhetoric not meeting the reality that was also picked up by the Salvation Army in its state of the nation report earlier this year. It said in its report around recidivism: “As in previous years the rates of re-offending and re-imprisonment have remained disappointingly consistent with the reported outcomes for 2010/11 showing no discernible trend of improvement or deterioration from previous years. This constancy is shown in the data provided … Spending on prisoner … rehabilitation [only] rose marginally [around] a 1.1 percent increase” taking inflation into account. In terms of what Judith Collins said around putting a lot more emphasis on rehabilitation we have not seen it at that end. We think this Government should take more action in terms of using home detention. It has as I pointed out no statistics. It had a lot better result in terms of recidivism.  
So we will support this bill because it does make some very good changes to those three Acts that I mentioned before but we do believe that this may be another attempt by the Government to look tough on law and order. I also look forward to looking at this bill at the Law and Order Committee. I am sure it will get a thorough looking at and I encourage people to make submissions to that Law and Order Committee so that we can look at some of the real issues that we are dealing with around recidivism in terms of those who serve non-custodial and custodial sentences. We support this bill.