Tanczos Nandor: Corrections Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Tanczos Nandor: Corrections Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:12989] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I intend to take a fairly short call on Part 1 for the simple reason that many of the substantive issues that we want to address come up in the next part. I wanted to raise and address some of the questions brought up by previous speakers because I find it really curious that so many members have such a strong aversion to the concept of rehabilitation—an issue that was brought up by Mr Franks Judith Collins Ron Mark and Marc Alexander who is interjecting to the side of me. I found that curious and I have two points to make. The first is that the hero of all of those members—of the “privateers” of the prison service—the General Manager of Auckland Central Remand Prison Dom Karauria said that rehabilitation was his central focus. In fact he pointed to that focus on rehabilitation being the success of what he has been doing at that remand prison rather than punishment.I find it curious that the members in this Parliament who are the champions of Mr Karauria are the very same people who ditch the basic assumptions that underpin his work. 
My second point is that members who call themselves the friends of the victims of crime are so focused on punishing people after the fact that they seem to have absolutely no interest in stopping future victims. The only way we will stop people becoming future victims of crime and the only way to make it less likely that people are victims of crime is if offenders are rehabilitated. It is an obvious equation that seems to have escaped members of the National Party New Zealand First ACT and United Future. Of course that should not surprise us at all. 
I draw attention to two points in the Supplementary Order Paper that relates to Part 1. The first is a particular role in rehabilitation and I commend Matt Robson in particular for the amendment in clause 6(ca) which states: “offenders must where appropriate and so far as is reasonable and practicable in the circumstances be provided with access to any process designed to promote restorative justice between offenders and victims:”. 
We know that one of the most effective ways to promote rehabilitation is through restorative justice. It tends to promote genuine remorse and a genuine desire to address and right the balance when offenders come face to face with the human face of their victim. We also know that in terms of victim satisfaction restorative justice is an extremely important and powerful way to meet the needs of victims and as I said a way of touching offenders and moving them to a rehabilitative impulse. 
The other amendment I would like to address is to clause 6(c)(i). The original bill clearly stated in clause 6(c) that in order to reduce the risk of reoffending decisions relating to sentence planning of management and the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders into the community must where appropriate take into account the cultural background ethnic identity and language of offenders. 
It is absolutely vital that it do so and the Greens—in negotiations with the Government—are keen to ensure that not just the individual management and sentence planning addresses those cultural needs and the ethnic identity and the like but also that in the development and provision of rehabilitative programmes and other interventions those things were taken into account. It is not enough to address simply the cultural needs of offenders at an individual level. One crucial thing we can learn from the Auckland Central Remand Prison in Mount Eden—and the Department of Corrections is trying to do that as well and has had varying degrees of success depending on the place and the personnel involved—is that those cultural perspectives must be integrated at a systematic level through the institution. 
It is not something that is applied just to the individual but the way in which the facility develops has to address those questions of culture ethnicity and language. The two amendments in the Supplementary Order Paper are extremely useful and ones that I would draw the Committee’s attention to. I cannot wait to move on to the next part.