Mark Ron: Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Mark Ron: Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:645;Page:14505] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of this bill. We will be supporting its passage through to the Law and Order Committee and we look forward to the work that will confront us at the select committee. 
For years I think it is fair to say since New Zealand First was founded by the Rt Hon Winston Peters back in 1993 our party has advocated some pretty firm views and attitudes on law and order and on policies and laws such as community service and aspects of the home detention laws. We have also been vigorous and consistent in our support for the police in terms of increasing their resources increasing their numbers and increasing the legislative armoury available to them to be able to prosecute and in concert with that reduce the levels of crime on our streets to try to make them safer. In short I think we have been described as tough on law and order. We have talked about such things as the introduction of the Limited Service Volunteers scheme and expanding it to make it more available to young offenders as a form of community service or a part of their sentence or their diversion. It is interesting that the party that opposed us on those views back in 1996 now touts those views as its own. It is interesting how time moves along and things change. 
Chris Tremain 
: It’s a new century! 
RON MARK 
: It is a new century and there are new people in the caucus—that is what I note. 
What is not so often recognised is that New Zealand First has also in tandem with that been very firm on its scrutiny of police and of the Department of Corrections with regard to the way in which they have gone about their business. I say with pride that my caucus supported me very strongly in my investigations into the activities that went on in Christchurch Prison and the emergency response unit—know then as the “goon squad”. It took 4 long years of battle but finally we got the inquiry we sought and the evidence is there for everybody to read to this day. 
It is interesting in the light of this bill to go back to the report of Ailsa Duffy QC. It seems bizarre to me that we are here in 2008 dealing with a bill that seeks to attack the issue of contraband. Yet one of the issues that was raised by prison officers who were angry frustrated and annoyed at the things they were being made to do and at the inconsistencies in the operating procedures within Canterbury’s prisons—and it was highlighted by Ailsa Duffy—was that there was no reporting recording or registering of contraband confiscated from visitors or inmates and surprise surprise some of it used to go missing just into thin air. 
No one knew what happened to the marijuana that had been confiscated. No one knew what happened to the alcohol that had been confiscated—it all just disappeared. That was in 2004. Of course prison officers were bringing this to my attention and saying: “This is appalling. We shouldn’t be operating like this. Our management is slack. Our management is useless. Our management is actually contributing to the problems by not recognising that there is a problem. They are not putting in place procedures and mechanisms to prevent the problem.” Those prison officers were roundly chastised and persecuted by people. Yet here we are in 2008 talking about dealing with contraband. 
I also note with interest that people in the National caucus have been asking written questions about contraband. The Minister has been answering those questions by saying he is unable to give details of how much contraband has been confiscated because to do so would require manual—manual—compilation of all those details from all the prisons all over the country. Hello! In this day and age when we have spent hundreds of millions developing INCIS computers spent hundreds of millions giving Land Information New Zealand a flash computer and information technology when Parliament has expanded its information technology systems and when the courts have expanded and integrated an information technology system are we saying that the Department of Corrections in 2008 is incapable? 
The Department of Corrections has spent how many millions on an integrated sentencing management scheme—the Integrated Offender Management system? How many millions has it spent on that? Is it $40 million $50 million or $100 million? I do not know. Yet people there have the nerve to say that they are incapable of recalling at the touch of a button a record of how much contraband has been confiscated where it was confiscated from and what it was. I would have thought that all of that would be treated as evidence and would therefore be required to be treated according to the well-tried and prudent procedures currently in place in the courts of this land and in the police. 
It is silly it is stupid and it is nonsensical that we find ourselves in this situation. It simply reinforces the conclusion that many of us have come to—that the Department of Corrections simply does not know what it is doing and is out of date. There are people in its head office here in Wellington and managing prisons around the country who should not be there. Half the reason we have had these allegations of systemic corruption within the prisons is that managers have been so appalling at their jobs. I ask members to read the report that Dr Pita Sharples spoke about. It says that there is no systemic corruption within prisons but that there is corruption. It says the greatest failing has been that of middle and upper management. 
I suggest to this House that the greatest failing the failing that has contributed so much and so widely to the problems we have faced in the corrections system over the last 8 9 and 10 years has been the quality and the calibre of personnel in the head office—a head office that now houses well over 400 people 100 of whom are analysts. A movie came out a long time ago entitled  
Analyze This 
 and that is my answer to those people. They really need to analyse their employment contracts get the heck out of the business and do the whole country a favour because their incompetence is not just costing New Zealanders money it is costing New Zealand in the form of the quality of justice that we deliver to people. 
I will never be an apologist for criminals but I do believe that every person who is incarcerated is entitled to be treated fairly and appropriately in accordance with the human rights that every one of us enjoys. There is no room in the corrections system for incompetent management. If this bill gives us the opportunity to scrutinise the way in which some things have been done and to tighten up some areas in respect of the bringing in of contraband then it is a good thing and we will do that and get on with it. But why did it take so long? If some of those people back in 2002 when I was so vigorously attacking them on behalf of New Zealand First for their failings had been honest enough simply to put up their hands and say: “Look quite sincerely we have not got our act together and there are a whole range of things we could be doing better.” we would have been a lot better off because we would have been further down the road than we are today. 
There are many issues within the corrections system and I am not sure that we are handling the issue of corruption properly and the issue of intimidation of officers appropriately. We do not recognise it would seem—we certainly do not seem to have or if we have now it has taken too long to get there—processes to identify risks that prison officers and their families face every day. I am told that there are many more issues waiting to be brought to this House and we will do that no doubt in the course of this year. I suggest to the Department of Corrections that we should have been prosecuting prison officers a long time ago in the criminal courts for acts of corruption. If we had done that we would have sent a very loud and clear message down the line that would have prevented stopped and killed off much of what we have seen since then. 
I also suggest that if we had had a better quality of management in some areas—and I know that Rimutaka Prison has had a change in that area—we would not have suffered these problems. Had some people who had been found guilty of misdemeanours guilty of poor management practice guilty of corrupt practice and guilty of illegal practice—and these are all the words of Ailsa Duffy QC—been fired from the Department of Corrections and if their service been terminated and they had been punished we would have also sent a very loud and clear message. But that did not happen. In fact in one case that I can think of right now the man who so infamously made a staff member put his penis on the bar in the West Melton pub whilst he hit it with a beer bottle got promoted. Need I say any more? It is time for the Department of Corrections to take a jolly good look at itself before some of us do.