Clendon David: Parole Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Parole Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 26 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:879. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green):It is interesting that we are debating this Parole Amendment Bill at this particular point when issues around early release of inmates from prison prior to completion of sentence are somewhat topical for obvious reasons to do with a particular individual’s sort of ill-considered trip to South America.But before speaking to the specifics of the bill I would just like to make some general comments about the value of parole. We are hearing voices—misguided voices in my view—that would suggest that we ought to completely abolish parole. Clearly this is not the intention of this bill—or anything near it—but we are starting to hear propositions that people sentenced to 3 years 5 years 7 years whatever it is should serve every day of that sentence and that parole should be eliminated as has been applied in one or two constituencies I think in the USA with not particularly satisfactory outcomes I would have to say.Parole has obvious and significant value. It allows for a degree of control to be applied to people after they have been released from prison and while they are returned into the community. It does give to the State a mechanism to apply some conditions and to keep a level of control and management of those individuals that would not otherwise be possible. There has been again one proposition that judges could set release conditions at the point of sentencing which is a ludicrous proposition when you think it through. How on earth could a judge whether they are sentencing someone 3 5 or 10 years down the track possibly be prescient enough to understand what conditions would prevail in terms of that person’s attitude and behaviours and the level of rehabilitation that has occurred?Clearly parole also provides incentives for inmates to behave well while they are in prison. Behaviour in prison is a significant determinant of eligibility or not for parole and to take that away would almost inevitably lead to prisons becoming more violent and more dangerous and places where there is less likelihood of any significant rehabilitation.The Green Party is not convinced or persuaded of the necessity for this legislation or that it will be in any way a useful or an effective contribution or solution to some of the issues that do surround parole. We understand the preference for extending the parole period between reviews for inmates where the chances of those people being released are acknowledged as being very slim. Inmates themselves often recognise that albeit they are going through the motions their chances of being released are very very minuscule. However we know there are existing mechanisms available to the Parole Board that could be used in the interim.We note that there are mechanisms in this bill that allow for inmates who complete milestone events to have their eligibility for parole review reinstated. Our fundamental concern about that is that we know already that the Department of Corrections is struggling to keep up with provision of rehabilitation programmes. In its scheduling of these programmes and its ability to link offenders who wish to undergo rehabilitative programmes be they education work readiness psychological work drug and alcohol treatment or whatever it might be the Department of Corrections is struggling already to provide for these people.We know that if we imposed a regime like this where one’s continued eligibility for parole review was a function of achieving programmes for instance the Department of Corrections would be inundated with requests for people to go into programmes that it simply is not equipped to meet. So it is sort of putting the cart before the horse a bit. It is creating a major incentive for inmates to seek rehabilitation while the provision is not there for those people to be put through those programmes and to undertake that treatment. We have heard that directly from the Department of Corrections and from people in the prison service. The lesser part of the issue is around its IT capacity and its ability to actually schedule these events and these programmes but more fundamentally it is simply that the resourcing is not there. We in the Greens actively advocate for—and have done for a long time—spending a lot less of the justice dollar on punishment. We need to reinvest that justice dollar into the provision of programmes.I do have to acknowledge that the previous Minister of Justice and the existing one are putting a great deal more focus on rehabilitation and reintegration but unfortunately the spend the dollar is not following the good intentions sufficiently quickly in order to enable otherwise quite good intentions to be fulfilled.Part of the rationale that we are offered for the extension of time between reviews is efficiency and cost saving. Again I am not suggesting that this is primarily a cost-saving measure but it is projected that there would be some dollar savings. I think counter to that you would have to consider whether the outcome of this new regime will be that people actually do spend longer in prison. Every inmate we know costs on average about $95000 to keep in prison. It would not require many such instances for any dollar savings to be very quickly chewed up by the fact that people are kept in prison longer.The more fundamental purpose of this—and we heard it from a previous speaker—is that it is true that we know that there is considerable stress on victims who do feel obliged to attend parole hearings. That is not a trivial matter but again we need to put that in perspective. We know—and again these are the Department of Corrections’ figures; they may be perhaps up to a year out of date but I think they will not have substantially changed—that only about 7 percent of eligible victims actually make submissions to Parole Board hearings so about seven out of every 100 make some form of submission and often it will be a written submission. About 3 percent of victims choose to address the board in person.I think a lot of people imagine that when a victim addresses the board they are obliged to confront the person who offended against them. That is absolutely not the case. Victims are never required to be in the same room as the inmate the person who offended against them. There is no such requirement of them. We are aware that the Parole Board is very sensitive to victims and seeks to accommodate them in comfortable non-threatening surroundings and often even travels to the victim rather than obliging them to travel to the site of the prison or wherever it may be. We know this directly.I must say that the Law and Order Committee did a good job on this bill. We actually took it upon ourselves under the leadership of the former chair of the committee Jacqui Dean to visit a prison and actually sit in on some Parole Board hearings. That was a very informative and valuable exercise to go through. We saw firsthand how the Parole Board operates and how it makes its decisions. It was a very useful addition to our knowledge and understanding of what actually goes on in the real world.I think the question that can be fairly raised is the extent to which this significant but very small minority of victims do participate in Parole Board hearings—one may fairly wonder how important their voice actually is. That is in no way to diminish their involvement or their engagement with this process but I think that the Parole Board rightly makes its judgment based on its clear belief and expectation of how people will behave once they are released from prison. Quite frankly I think it would be almost taken as a given that a person who has been offended against would want that person to serve the maximum amount. In very few examples we do see people who are offended against but nevertheless express their forgiveness and I respect that but for the most part I think that the views and input of the victim would be a relatively small part in the overall mix that influences the Parole Board decisions.I think we have to consider that there is a danger that part of the requirement would be that people confess to guilt. There is a very real likelihood that people who genuinely do believe themselves to be innocent—and it must be acknowledged that people on occasion are imprisoned and later found to be innocent of the offence that they were found guilty of—would simply tell lies. They would be compelled to admit guilt simply to be eligible for one of these releases.In short finally I would say that we believe the Parole Board has existing mechanisms that enables it to not go through the motions unnecessarily. This proposal is well intentioned but we do not see that it would deliver the outcomes that are expected or that it would be intended to deliver. For that reason we will not be supporting it.Debate interrupted.