Katene Rahui: Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Katene Rahui: Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8196. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 The basic proposal in the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill is that the Department of Corrections will have access to court cells in order to house overflow prisoners from the first half of 2010 when the court cells may be needed. Once the bill has passed today the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Corrections will fast track work specifying the cells that may be used for overflow prisoners the circumstances in which the cells will be made available for this purpose and how the cells will be operated. So in many respects we are already well down the road towards implementation while this debate proceeds. This is not unusual of course. The Department of Corrections has been forecast to run out of baseline beds early next year so there is an immediate issue around prisoner accommodation and public safety. We are in this situation because prisoner numbers swelled under the previous Labour Government from about 5000 in 1996 to 8400 now. 
Changes in New Zealand’s criminal justice policy in the past decade have been extraordinarily rapid and this rapid change is set to continue. But another facet of this increase in the prison muster is of note. From 1997 to 2007 although the number of those sentenced to prison increased by 37 percent those remanded into custody increased by a staggering 214 percent. This bill is an attempt to do something about housing those prisoners and to do it quickly. 
We know that this bill fits into the context of a range of other measures that are being taken to address prison population pressures including approval for extended double-bunking at five prisons. However there is some uncertainty about the ability to access the additional double-bunked capacity which may mean there may be insufficient accommodation for prisoners from June 2010. It is estimated that a further 5000 beds will be needed by 2018. One of the more controversial operations has been the proposal to establish a 60-bed container unit at Rimutaka Prison. This is the first such project of its kind in New Zealand and the emphasis has been on the fact that it is cheaper and faster to construct than facilities for a new prison. We in the Maori Party are not convinced as to whether the recycled container solution is an effective solution to the overarching issue of prison numbers but we will leave that and the double-bunking issue for another time. 
Today’s debate is basically the option of last resort. The proposal is that once the regional capacity at police jails is exhausted court cells will be used to accommodate overflow prisoners. Although there are currently 10 blocks of court cells some 101 cells that have been gazetted as parts of prisons the Resource Management Act prevents them from being used for the overnight accommodation of prisoners. The approval sought in this bill is to amend the Corrections Act so that the requirements of section 9 of the Resource Management Act do not apply to the detention of prisoners in court cellblocks. In effect this means that where there is an acute shortage of prison accommodation court cells can be used to accommodate overflow prisoners without undue delay or cost. The Maori Party is willing to give begrudging support to this bill to basically ensure that there is short-gap inmate accommodation in place for prisons to access if there is no other facility available. The last thing we want in prisons is overcrowding triple-bunking or for our prisons to be under any more stress than is necessary. 
But there is an important rider that we place on our support. The Associate Minister of Corrections Dr Sharples raised during the Committee stage the issue of safety and spoke of some break-outs from court cells in the past. He spoke from his wide experience of some 35 years of working in the prisons and courts but he made it clear that the Maori Party is supporting this bill as a response to the crisis over prison cell shortages. We recall that more than half of the most serious prison escapes in the 2006 financial year were made from court cells. In that year six of the 11 break-outs took place from courts throughout the country. In one of the more embarrassing cases two remand prisoners escaped by breaking through the ceiling of their cell. In another case an inmate was just 20 minutes into a 9-month prison sentence for burglary when he escaped from a holding cell at Waipukurau District Court. Concern has been raised about prisoner deaths while in custody in court cells given they are multiple occupancy. There are some real issues around public safety that may fall out of this new proposal which I trust the Minister will give attention to. 
Another key issue is the one around the emotional and physical safety of prisoners located in cells. The investigation of the circumstances surrounding the death of Liam John Ashley reported that Liam a 17-year-old teenager had been held in a court cell with adult prisoners for the whole of the day on which he received his fatal injuries. Action for Children and Youth Aotearoa a coalition of non-governmental organisations and individuals interested in children’s rights drew on this situation to petition the Law and Order Committee about the Department of Corrections. I draw the attention of the House to that recommendation namely that the department should ensure that when prisoners under 18 years of age are moved to court cells either the department or the police ensure that they are kept separate from adult prisoners. 
There is however a much bigger debate that needs to be held in this House which forms the broader context for this bill on the use of court cells for prisoner accommodation. It is the urgent need to comprehensively review the criminal justice system and particularly the high levels of incarceration—specifically of Maori. 
Many of the speakers before me have referred to the fact that the Vote Corrections budget continues to escalate as a result of prison being the priority response to offending by both the previous and current Governments. The total appropriations for the Department of Corrections have increased by $368.731 million or 33.54 percent since last year. The total vote is now over $1.5 billion per year. This is a substantial increase given the context of the world’s deepest recession in at least 60 years. We are aware that Treasury projections for Vote Corrections 2020 are a massive $2 billion per year. 
There are fiscal reasons why we need to review the overpopulation of our prisons. But there is a far greater moral and ethical issue about the rising trends in prison populations. In 2007 the Ombudsman Mel Smith carried out an investigation into issues involving the criminal justice sector. His report suggested a royal commission of inquiry should be called to undertake a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system. The overrepresentation of Maori should be an area of significant focus of any commission of inquiry. One of the reasons why the Ombudsman made the suggestion for a commission of inquiry is that it will allow an opportunity to stop and reflect on why the punitive treadmill seems to grow and pick up speed. It is hoped to find constructive ways to slow it down. 
The Maori Party believes that crime prevention needs to be looked at in a different way—holistically—to try to change contextual factors as well as the outcomes. A kaupapa Maori justice strategy will be a starting point for doing things differently—doing things from a Maori values base of restoring and transforming. The idea is to have a strategy that will address practical things that whanau hapu iwi marae communities organisations and institutions can do to get going with the doing of creating alternatives to police courts and the prison system. The Maori Party supports the good work that the Associate Minister of Corrections has been doing to this end. We will as we said earlier give begrudging support to this legislation to use court cells as an emergency stopgap measure until the more enduring solution is available.