Estimates Debate — Vote Corrections

I have been looking forward to making a few comments on Vote Corrections, and I look forward to the Minister’s response to some of my concerns.

First of all I send my condolences to Barry Matthews for landing the job of CEO, Department of Corrections and probably getting himself into a department where he had no idea how bad things were, before he got there. I quite genuinely wish him well in his attempts to right what have been a number of historic debacles in that department, although I have to say they do not appear to be getting better, at all.

The estimates process is an opportunity for the Committee to ask the Minister a couple of questions. Could the Minister explain to the Committee, and the public of New Zealand, how the building of four new prisons originally estimated to cost $400 million, ended up costing $890 million? I think the public of New Zealand would be quite interested to know the answer. Could he also tell us how, in the building of those four prisons, the average cost per bed, across those four prisons, is $535,000? I think the public of New Zealand would be very interested to know that—in particular, those people who live in Otago and are waiting for the completion of the “Milton Hilton” where beds are costing over $600,000 each, and in an environment—Milton—where one would imagine that sum of money could buy two or three homes for each prisoner, not provide one prison cell.

I think it would be useful if the Minister were able to explain how inmates have been able to go to the beach for a day, supervised by the Department of Corrections. Because a number of inmates from Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison had “behaved well” they spent a day at the beach. I think the public of New Zealand would be interested to know how that occurred. I also think they would like to know how it is that prostitutes were phoned and invited to Rimutaka Prison in recent weeks. I think they would be interested to know how it is that people in South Island prisons are able to access steak, eggs, and chips, lollies, and ice cream for good behaviour. More particularly, I think the public of New Zealand would like to know these two things: the first is how it is that $11 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent landscaping those four new prisons, and, second, why that $11 million has not been spent on rehabilitation and employment programmes for those inmates, so that when they come out of prison, and, as we all acknowledge, they are all coming out of prison, they are at least able to make some attempt at constructively being reintegrated.

I would also like the Minister to tell the public of New Zealand and me how it is that with 7,600 prisoners, 83 percent of whom have drug and alcohol problems, there are only 44 specialist drug beds in our prison system. I would like to know how it is that since 2004, when the Corrections Act was passed, $2.6 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent on transferring the management of the Auckland Central Remand Prison back to the public sector, when that money could have been spent on rehabilitation, employment programmes, and drug and alcohol specialist beds in those prisons.

I want to know how the Minister can keep turning his back on an utterly incompetent department over which he has no political management, at all, relying only on the bumbling efforts of senior management of that department to get things wrong on a daily and hourly basis. The only person who has had anything to do with corrections in the last 12 months—who sits here smiling—is Paul Swain. He knew, the day he got out of that portfolio, that it was all turning to custard. He laughs every time I say that, because he knows that is right.

I say to the Minister that these are serious questions. The department, for which he has responsibility, is in a shambles. The public of New Zealand are saying to the Minister that these questions are serious. His department is in a shambles. The public of New Zealand know it is in a shambles. I ask him to stand and explain to the public of New Zealand how it is that that level of money continues to be wasted in that department, yet prisoners are not being rehabilitated and society is becoming no safer. The responsibility for that rests on his shoulders.

I have been knocking around prisons for a while now and have been in and out of jail for about 30 years, and, thankfully, it has been my choice to come and go. But over that time I have come to know a bit about inmates, and I have put my fair share behind bars and done my fair share in preventing some from getting there. I have been in jails as a visitor, a cop, and a lawyer. I have represented inmates in prison hearings and in courthouses, and on occasions I have had them out for the day, and taken them home for lunch. So as fast as I am being pushed in one pigeon-hole by the other side of the Chamber, I am doing my best to struggle out of it. I reckon that although I have a lot to learn about criminals and offending, I think I have my head around a lot of things that set some people on the road to a life of crime.

The Sentencing Act 2002, in respect of the purposes of sentencing, is about denunciation and deterrence, protection of the community, rehabilitation, and holding the offender to account for the harm done. The golden thread of custodial sentences must be “they’ve got to come out better than they went in”. My criticism of the Government is that in respect of this golden thread, it has been an abject failure. In 1999 I took a group of National Party members to Kaitoke prison, especially to look at the enterprise schemes operating within the prison. One of the schemes we looked at was a shoe factory. The shoe factory employed about 100 inmates a year and almost all of them had never worked before. Anecdotally, the supervisors told me that they had never had one of their shoe factory inmates back on a custodial sentence. At the time the cost was about $55,000 a year to keep an inmate in jail; the shoe factory prevented those people from reoffending. One could argue it saved New Zealand over $5 million a year. With expected recidivist rates it saved at least $3.5 million, in any event, but the contract ended, and in 2002 the Labour Government decided not to renew it, because the scheme did not make a profit.

About 6 weeks ago I attended a Sycamore Project graduation in a prison. I have attended two such programmes, which are marvellous for addressing the restorative element essential in turning an offender’s life round. I was talking to a man who was doing his first prison sentence. I understand it was for his first crime and it was for a serious offence, obviously—a drug offence. He had heard the cell door slam behind him and knew straight away that he had stuffed up big time: that he had failed his family and those who cared about him, and would be spending at least another 6 years in jail. He was a drug dealer, and I have no sympathy for him or his kind. I do not believe that drug offences are victimless crimes, and we need to deal swiftly and harshly with them to expedite the purposes of sentencing, as I have already laid them out. But that man who wants to change his ways and wants to get off the drugs, needs help to stay clean, even in jail. But he cannot get on a drug programme until he has done two-thirds of his 8-year sentence. He needs help right now but he cannot access it. So 44 beds for 7,600 prisoners, 83 percent of whom have drug and alcohol problems, is not going to cut it. Temptation is everywhere, even in jail. But this Government withholds any assistance for another 4 years.

What is more, we know that almost every one of those offenders has multiple problems and multiple needs. They cannot read or write. They abuse substances and/or have big violence problems or sexual and physical abuse histories, and frequently beat the hell out of women and children or have the hell beaten out of them.

With prisoners it is not a chicken-and-egg quandary—we know which comes first. We know that violence begets violence, and that the sexually abused become sexual abusers. We know that children of alcoholics and drug addicts breed children dependent on alcohol and drugs. Yet under this Government the treatment is withheld, for no good reason other than that it is not a sufficient priority. We should get people into jail, if jail is where they need to go, and turn some lives round. One day we will see prisons shut for the want of inmates because people really will come out better than when they went in. We know that it will not happen overnight, and it is not rocket science, but it just has to happen.

I welcome the opportunity to outline a few of the things that the Department of Corrections has ahead of it. I firstly acknowledge the good work of my colleague Paul Swain who is in the Chamber. I thank him for his incredible effort in getting from Dr Cullen—and it is not easy—a huge amount of money to build four brand new prisons that this country desperately needs. It is a sad indictment that we need them, but, none the less, we are committed to a huge building programme. The programme initially started out at 1,000 beds and has now ended up at 1,600 beds—in fact, we are moving to over 2,100 new cells in this country. It is sad, but it is necessary. This Government is absolutely committed to locking up dangerous and violent offenders for longer in order to keep society safe from those people.

I welcome the new level of knowledge and awareness from the National Party, because I have said, as have my colleagues, that there are a number of people currently in jail who we think may be better able to serve their sentence and repay society in other ways. In fact, I read just today the statement: “It could be with some white-collar crimes that much more serious fines and the taking of people’s assets would be a more effective use of taxpayers’ money …”. That came from John Key. Well, he may choose white collar criminals. I will not say whether people are white collar or blue collar, but I accept there are people who could serve their sentence in perhaps more innovative ways. That is what the Department of Corrections is committed to do, and that is what Barry Matthews is committed to do, to help this Government to move forward.

Since Labour came into Government in 1999, and after the Department of Corrections went through years of neglect and lack of investment by the previous National Government, we have reduced by 80 percent the number of break-out escapes in our prison system. We have reduced by 90 percent the number of serious inmate assaults on staff. That is the true measure of how effective we are. Rather than listen to the garbage spoken by Simon Power about the department being ineffective and in chaos, I say that the department does an outstanding job every day, as do all the staff. But there are areas for improvement. I acknowledge the work that Chester Borrows has done in this area. I think he is doing a very good job to try to swing around a fairly narrow-minded National Party caucus—good on him; he should keep up that good work. Yes, we do have insufficient numbers of drug treatment programme places, and we are expanding them right now.

Nick Smith, as a former Minister of Corrections, spent nothing, and Labour has had to put in a huge amount of money to try to compensate. We are putting more money into drug and alcohol units. We are opening up one in the South Island, we will have another one in the lower North Island, and we are expanding the drug and alcohol units at Waikeria Prison. I acknowledge that there were cutbacks in employment opportunities within the prison system and that that has not been the best thing. We are turning that round and we are telling corrections inmate employment, which is a part of the Department of Corrections, to go out, to work with industry, and to work with regions to try to find employment opportunities related to those industries that are crying out for labour—because we have a very vibrant rural, provincial economy because of this Government.

We now have opportunities that were not there 5 or 6 years ago in regional and rural New Zealand, and the prisons, by virtue of their location, are ideally placed to provide workers, be it in horticulture, agriculture, forestry, engineering, or other areas where there is a desperate need for well-trained people. We cannot just turn prisoners from inmates into well-trained workers without rehabilitation, without drug and alcohol treatment, and without providing them with the opportunity to go through criminogenic programmes that identify the cause of their offending. We have evaluated one of the programmes, Straight Thinking, which was the mainstream programme. It was deemed not to be as effective as we need. The member Anne Tolley laughs. Well, we are going to check all the money we spend and make sure it is being spent wisely. We have done so. We are re-evaluating the rehabilitation programmes so that they work better, so that we get better outcomes, and, ultimately, so that people come into prison once and go out and stay out. That is what we want to do.

We do not want to keep building new prisons because more and more people are being thrown in prison. It is a difficult situation. In a wonderful country like ours, where we know most people in our small communities—even Auckland is a small community by international comparisons—and know most of what is happening, we lock up more people than we should. We do so at the second-highest rate in the Western World. I think we are embarrassed because people like Nick Smith did not put money into basic social services. He cut benefits in 1991—that is the kind of thing that severely impacts on the prison population over time. We are moving to address that. We are committed to more—and more effective—rehabilitation programmes, more drug and alcohol treatment, more effective criminogenic programmes, and more work and skills training in prisons.

We have a big task ahead of us—a wonderfully exciting challenge. I now welcome the new awareness of the problem and the change in attitude from the National Party in the latest statement by John Key. If there is still debate within the National Party caucus, then I hope that sensible people like Chester Borrows and John Key, obviously, win the day and swing in behind us as we move through a process of shifting the prison system into one of proper rehabilitation and of reintegration back into society. We welcome the support from the National Party for that. We have had wonderful support from other parties to move in this direction, but we still have a lot to do.

Finally, I again applaud the incredible efforts that all the staff, from top to bottom, of the Department of Corrections make. They work in very difficult situations, with, at times, very difficult people. If we look at the cold hard facts, we see the 80 percent reduction in escapes and the 90 percent reduction in serious assaults on prison officers. That has to indicate that the system is working, but over time we have to reduce the number of people in this country whom we lock up and who are in prison for too long a period.