Wilkinson Kate: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — First Reading 
Wilkinson Kate: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:6880] 
KATE WILKINSON (National) 
: 
 In speaking on this Criminal Justice Reform Bill it is useful I think to start with some introductory background. In New Zealand as has already been highlighted we really do have some appalling crime statistics. The latest statistics published by the New Zealand Police show that over the past 12 months total crime has increased by 6.9 percent—nearly 7 percent—contradicting previous claims from the Government that crime figures are actually falling. Violent crime has continued to trend upwards since this Government came to power. Since the 1999-2000 year violent crime has risen by 26 percent from 40090 offences to 50644 offences. Grievous assaults are up by 54 percent and serious assaults are up by 30 percent and I do not think that that represents in anyone’s mind a decline. 
There is an alarming increase in the intensity of violence across the community. We have had a sharp increase across a range of crimes in the past year alone. Violent crime is up by 10.2 percent. Grievous assaults are up by 19 percent. Homicides are up by 31 percent. Kidnapping and abduction are up by 46 percent. Intimidation and threats are up by 14 percent. Robbery is up by 20 percent. Sexual assault is up by 13 percent. Sex crimes are up by 8.2 percent. Dishonesty offences are up by 7.8 percent. Car conversions are up by 17 percent. House burglaries are up by 11 percent. Receiving stolen goods offences are up by 33 percent. Drug offences and antisocial offences are up by 6.3 percent. Busts for new drugs—methamphetamine—are up by 50 percent. Property damage is up by 15 percent. In all those figures I do not see one decline whatsoever. I have to say that these figures are a serious indictment on the crime prevention strategies of this Government. Its promises to reduce crime are simply not backed up by action. 
This issue is about crimes against people and the Government is failing to deliver safer communities. So what does the Government do to get on top of the crime problem? It introduces this Criminal Justice Reform Bill which is designed to stop the increase in prison population but it does absolutely nothing to prevent crime from occurring in the first place. As Dr Sharples has already mentioned the big question that has to be answered and that needs to be addressed—and that has not been addressed—is how to reduce crime in the first place. 
The bill creates a new Sentencing Council and my colleagues Mr Power and Mr Finlayson have already adequately and more than adequately covered this matter. The council itself has some laudable objectives. One is to produce guidelines relating to sentencing levels sentencing principles types of sentences and sentencing practice. The second is to produce guidelines regarding parole. The third objective is to produce guidelines in relation to the prison muster. It also assesses the cost-effectiveness of the guidelines—presumably the fiscal cost of the guidelines rather than the important cost to the community of the crime in the first place. The council is also to give advice collate information provide information plus any other functions incidental to and related to any of the above. 
The National Party’s concern which has already been mentioned is that this can very easily transform itself into the “Scapegoat Council”. This council can be given the blame for any criticisms whatsoever on sentencing. The rationale will be that it is not the Government’s policies that are at fault; it is the council’s policies. The council can take the blame for the Government’s lack of policies in relation to the reduction of crime. The priority must be to prevent the crime in the first place not to put a bureaucratic council in place to act as a scapegoat to act as a political tool and to hide the failure of Government policies that are not addressing the problem of the increasing rate of crime. 
The bill is about reducing prison populations. It is not about reducing crime. And how exactly does it reduce those prison populations? Well it appears that it reduces the prison populations by letting people out of jail. Part 2 of the bill amends several Acts—the Bail Act the Sentencing Act the Parole Act and the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act. It has been mentioned that it introduces home detention as a sentence in its own right rather than as merely a way of serving a sentence of imprisonment as under the existing legislation. It introduces a new sentence of community detention and intensive supervision. These are hardly sentences illustrating any policy of being tough on crime. 
Under the bill a court may sentence an offender to either intensive supervision or community detention if the offender is convicted of an offence punishable by imprisonment an offence under an Act providing for a sentence of home detention or an offence under an Act providing for a community-based sentence. In other words it is an either/or situation. So any offence punishable by imprisonment can be—so-called—punished by intensive supervision or by community detention sentences. 
We have to ask what message this sends back to the members of our community about how highly we regard their safety. We do know that historically community-based sentences have been a failure. For example in the 2005-06 year 28 percent of offenders breached community work orders—up from 23 percent in the previous year 2004-05. 
The bill also amends the Parole Act. Currently those offenders sentenced to under 2 years’ imprisonment are automatically released after half that time. Those with sentences of 2 years’ imprisonment or more will be eligible for parole after one-third. Under this bill those offenders with sentences of 2 years’ imprisonment or more who are eligible for parole will be eligible at two-thirds of their sentence. But as the Law Commission pointed out sentences would have to be about 25 percent shorter after the parole changes if the length of time served was to be the same and the size of the prison population unaffected. In other words what is tougher about that? 
The public have asked for truth in sentencing. People do not want to be hoodwinked into thinking that there is any truth in sentencing when a 25 percent reduction on average would not necessarily mean a reduction in the actual punishment as the amount of time being served by the prisoner might be exactly the same. The net result is still the same—100 percent of nothing is still nothing. 
We have an increasing prison population. We are building at exorbitant costs more prisons. But softening the sentences is not the right or the safe way to reduce the number of prisoners. The safety of our law-abiding citizens is paramount and should not be endangered because this Government has run out of ideas and thinks that the best way to be tough on crime is to reduce by whatever means the prison population. The best way to be tough on crime is to reduce crime in the first place. This bill does not address that matter.