O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Madam Chair thank you. I'd just like to continue on the theme that I explored in my last five minutes on my feet—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): As long as it's not repetitious that would be fine.GREG O'CONNOR: —in relation to clause 4. In relation to that I would like to ask the member in the chair Simeon Brown if he has looked at the effect of moving the sentencing for dealing in heroin to life imprisonment in the 1970s and seen if there's any evidence that it had any effect at all on the use of price and availability of heroin in New Zealand at that time because that moves us on to the whole sentencing regime.I have been in the police for some time and unlike some of my colleagues I see a role—an important role—for imprisonment. I see an important role for smart imprisonment. When the Sensible Sentencing Trust was formed I had some dealings with them and I remarked to them at the time—I said You've named yourselves very well: 'Sensible Sentencing' ". Unfortunately what happened with the Sensible Sentencing Trust is they became the "Longer Sentencing Trust". All that they ever talked about was longer sentences and they lost a really important opportunity to be an important part of that sentencing debate.Smarter sentencing really means that short sharp sentences are often more effective because particularly when it comes to drugs and particularly drug dealing it is the disruptive effect of removing someone from their environment. They will undoubtedly owe a lot of people money they'll undoubtedly be owed a lot of money and removing them from their environment means that all of a sudden that whole environment that whole drug-dealing enterprise they're in is disrupted. That is the effective way to use prisons.In New York following the changes that they made around the well-known or so-called broken windows theory the effects were quite dramatic on the streets of New York. I was lucky enough to spend time in New York to look at the sentencing and I compare this with clause 4 of this bill—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): It'd be good if you could come to the point.GREG O'CONNOR: I looked at the sentencing there and what they found was that actually their prisons were full. They went to the prisons and said "Let them out. We don't care. Actually catching them is more important." It is more important—the fact of jail. It is more important when we catch these people committing crime that we're able to send them to prison—didn't matter how long; send them out the top end and we will catch you. If they recycle in we'll catch them again. That was what had the biggest effect. It's a well-known—and again don't rely on my experience; this is well through the research. It is the fear of getting caught or more importantly the belief you'll get caught which is more important than the sentence.So I go back to clause 4 of this bill which is around merely increasing the sentence. What that does and will do ultimately is prevent the system from using something that can actually be a very effective tool in preventing the dealing in particular and disrupting the whole flow of drugs because disruption's about getting people off. Sending them to jail for eight years actually risks doing the very thing that we don't want to do. It means the prisons do become more full. It means that those that should be coming at the front end—it makes it more difficult to do that. We end up having to build more prisons and we lose the real effective part of what sentencing can be.That's not to say there are not people of course that should be in prison and should never see the light of day and I think we've got some effective methods in place to make sure that happens. But I would suggest that merely looking to solve any problem by making the sentence longer is to ignore so many other possibilities that can be effective. In doing so and going back to clause 4 of this bill—and it is that part of a bill that is most significant which is being most heavily debated tonight. By doing that by seeing that as some sort of panacea of all ills the thing that is going to fix things overnight—just add water and stir—then that will deny us the opportunity to use sentencing for what it should be used for which is to disrupt criminal activity and in this case to decrease the chances of those vulnerable mostly youth getting hold of this substance in the first place. Thank you Madam Chair."