Harawira Hone: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — Third Reading 
Harawira Hone: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:663;Page:11237] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tatou e te Whare. Today is the anniversary of the arrests at Bastion Point on 25 May 1978. Back then 222 of us were hauled off to the clink and charged with trespass which was not a big charge back in those days but today things are different. As we saw from the police paranoia in the terrorist raids on Tuhoe a couple of years ago even simple charges such as trespass seem to have taken on a greater seriousness as the State targets those it wants to shut down using charges that allow it to call out the armed offenders squad and using the media to beat up stories that the court is showing have no substance whatsoever in the harsh light of day. So when we talk today about the list of 32 charges that will make up the “three strikes” criteria— 
David Garrett 
: Forty-one. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: —well I have just added another one—the 42 charges that will make up the “three strikes” criteria in this third and final reading of the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill believe me that is only today’s list. It will not be long before trespass and other similar charges will be added to the list by politicians too dumb too lazy and too mean-spirited to resolve issues intelligently and who choose the big stick as the resort of first choice. To no one’s surprise it will be Maori who suffer most when that happens. Prison statistics tell us that even though Maori are only 14 percent of the population we are 50 percent of the prison muster and have been so for more than 20 years. If members think that is bad believe me this “three strikes” bill will make it much much worse because without decent rehabilitation programmes first-strikers and second-strikers will carry on getting it wrong because they will not be learning anything. They are simply reacting to problems in the only way they know and they will get hammered. 
Because I suspect that a lot of members in this House do not believe me I recommend that they read the countless reports that vividly detail the historical tragedy of systemic bias and outright racism against Maori in respect of arrests charges convictions and jail sentences in this country. These reports tell us that given equal number of Pakeha and Maori being arrested for similar incidents the ones who are more likely to be charged are Maori; given equal numbers of Pakeha and Maori appearing in court on similar charges the ones who are more likely to be convicted are Maori; given equal numbers of Pakeha and Maori being convicted on similar charges the ones who are more likely to be sentenced to jail are Maori; and given equal numbers of Pakeha and Maori being sent to jail on similar charges the ones who are more likely to be given the longest sentences are Maori. For those who doubt this scenario I urge them to give me a call and I will be happy to organise a seminar with a Pakeha lecturer to confirm what I am saying today. When I say that Maori are the ones who will cop the dirty end of this “three strikes” bill members can believe it. 
It is a short-sighted man who thinks that legislation that sends people to jail for a long time reduces crime rates. It is a blind man who sees justice in sentencing people to life imprisonment for responding to circumstances they have little control over. It is a bloody fool who thinks that this bill will do anything else but create frustration anger and violence within our prison population. This anger will explode for any reason and at any time because when someone is in jail for life the only question that that person considers when faced with conflict is not: “Gee what can happen to me if I do this?”. It is: “What else can they do to me?”. There is nothing they can do. I know because I have been to jail. I have been in the mainstream wing I have been in the remand wing and I have been in the separation wing. An offender in the separation wing who is faced with conflict does not worry about what the bloody jailer will do or what the system will do. They cannot do any more because the offender is already in jail. I know what I am talking about and 100 percent of the MPs in this House do not. 
When politicians talk about a safe society let me ask this question. What about the next generation who have to grow up with the children of those who have been jailed for life? These children will grow up with a deep-seated and very real hatred of society for a life spent below the margins that they have been forced to lead. This hatred will be revisited on society through ever-increasing rates of mayhem and murder. That of course will add weight to the calls for more guns for the police and that will lead to more guns for civilians which will lead to bigger guns for criminals. The only question we will have left to ask ourselves is when did we become the southernmost state of the gun-loving USA. That is the future we will be giving ourselves with a bill like this. That is the only future for a society that treats the punishment of its members with the contempt being contemplated by this legislation that refuses to take the steps of intelligent societies to reduce offending by reducing the causes of offending rather than jailing offenders for life. 
Heck even our own Ombudsman admits that there are smarter ways than imprisonment to prevent crime and make criminals accountable and that prison is not the most effective or efficient approach to reducing crime. Yet what are we doing? We are building more prisons we are double-bunking prisoners we are making plans to keep offenders in prison for life and we are dumb enough to think we can tell how well we are dealing with crime by counting how many people we have put into prison. 
The Department of Corrections received $500000 in 2000 nearly a million dollars in 2008 and it is predicted that we will spend $2 billion by 2020 and that is without the “three strikes” bill being factored in. We could ask whether that is what this Government thinks our society should be spending its money on. Yes we have a problem with violent crime in this society; there is no question about that. Yes we have to do something about it. But let us at least be intelligent about it and look to other international examples where rehabilitation and reintegration into society have been proven to work over the “lock ’em up and throw away the key” model. Research tells us that places that have trialled “three strikes” have higher murder rates bigger prison populations and leave a huge impact on marginalised populations—read Maori when I say that—higher costs and negative impacts on the families of offenders. 
I am not a great fan of British justice but I note that the Justice Committee of the British House of Commons recently made the case for justice reinvestment. It called for a more holistic approach to crime reduction by tackling the conditions of criminality—poverty low educational attainment drug and alcohol problems and the lack of housing and employment. The committee’s report came out of very clear evidence that prison is a very expensive way of dispensing justice and seeking reform and concluded that justice reinvestment was a far more prudent rational effective and humane use of resources. 
Last week Dr Pita Sharples took a step down a similar path when he announced the establishment of two reintegration units where the focus will be on helping inmates to prepare for life outside the wire using kaupapa Maori to help them get jobs and accommodation and help them to improve relationships with whanau and with their communities. But even still it seems that our focus is elsewhere. Only 5 percent of the budgets of the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Corrections is spent on rehabilitation reintegration and crime prevention; only 5 percent. Most of the money is burnt up in administration staffing buildings and beefed-up security measures for bigger prisons. When a department spends only 5 percent of its budget on rehabilitation we can guarantee that all the highfalutin plans will not only fail but will eventually come back to bite us on the backside—if not us then certainly our children and grandchildren. 
The Maori Party opposes this bill with all its heart. We will work with whomever it takes to develop intelligent policy over knee-jerk idiocy and rehabilitation over degradation. Kia ora tatou katoa.