Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Law and Order Committee. This bill is intended to reinforce and strengthen the Corrections Act 2004.

The most significant provisions are in two areas. First, there are measures to enhance the safety and security of our prisons through the further reduction of contraband and the suppression of cellphone use. Secondly, there is improved provision for agencies to share information about the highest-risk offenders to assist in the monitoring and reintegration of those offenders on their release from prison.

By the end of the 1990s, drug use had become endemic in our prisons. For example, in 1999 at least 34 percent of inmates in some prisons were testing positive for using drugs. I am very pleased to say that by last year we had more than halved that rate, but we can do better still. Changes in technology have also increased the problem of access to cellphones, which are smuggled into prisons. On occasions these have been used to organise crime from inside the prison. On one occasion they were used to arrange an armed escape, and they have also been used to intimidate people outside the prison.

A lot of progress has been made in the fight against contraband through increased security and surveillance. Some 17 kilometres of security fences have been erected since 1999. Electronic security devices, cameras, closed-circuit television, motion detectors, and microwave sensors are amongst the additional security measures that have been put in place. Increased surveillance has included doubling the number of drug-dog teams to 12—they have proven very effective—and regular checkpoints set up outside the prison to screen visitors and staff. These new measures have resulted in the detection of much more contraband.

This bill is needed to complement these operational initiatives. It includes a number of important changes to the Corrections Act that will make it harder for anyone to bring prohibited items into prisons, and easier to detect such items and punish prisoners and others for using them. The changes include enhanced procedures for searching prisoners, and increased powers to search in specific circumstances. There is also provision for random searches of areas of a prison, including staff lockers. Offence provisions relating to contraband are tightened up, with the introduction of new offences and some increases in penalties. Prisoners who possess or use any electronic communication device such as a cellphone will face the prospect of an extension to their sentence. Anyone who knowingly possesses an unauthorised item while visiting or working in a prison will also be committing an imprisonable offence. A zero-tolerance approach to criminal or corrupt behaviour by staff is reinforced by increasing the penalties on staff passing contraband, from the current 3 months’ maximum sentence of imprisonment to 1 year in prison, and doubling the maximum fine to $5,000.

In addition, the bill addresses the problem of prisoners who tamper, or attempt to tamper, with tests for drug and alcohol usage. For example, there is a provision for retesting if a prisoner’s sample is diluted, tainted, or otherwise contaminated. There is also provision for strip-searching in those circumstances when a prisoner has to be retested.

It may not be possible to stop all cellphones from getting into prisons by use of normal search and seizure provisions. Action to jam, detect, and monitor cellphone and other radio-based communications within prison boundaries is another important way to stop misuse of cellphones by inmates, and this bill provides specific authorisation for the Department of Corrections to do this. The bill creates the legislative framework for the implementation of a range of technical solutions, such as jamming technology, in prisons throughout the country. The Department of Corrections and the Ministry of Economic Development have been working with Telecom and Vodafone to develop and trial these solutions. I have to say that the ongoing support of Telecom and Vodafone in this work is much appreciated.

I turn now to information sharing. Current legislation does allow the Department of Corrections to share certain information with the police regarding highest-risk offenders when they are released from prison. However, the information that may be disclosed is not always sufficient to enable police identification of the offender. Further, because disclosure is only to the police and only for monitoring purposes, it does not assist with the reintegration of those offenders into the community. This bill will allow disclosure of information on highest-risk offenders that is sufficient to allow a coordinated response by the Department of Corrections, the police, and, where appropriate, relevant social agencies.

The opportunity has also been taken to tidy up a number of other, smaller issues in the Act. The Crown is provided with appropriate protection from liability in situations that may arise in epidemics or other emergencies affecting prisoners, such as when a prisoner may be required in those circumstances to stay beyond the full term of the sentence. Although there is a general prohibition on alcohol in prisons, for obvious reasons, it is made clear that prisoners are allowed to take Communion wine in small doses. There is a general prohibition on prison staff carrying firearms, but under this bill firearms may be used in prisons—for example, on prison farms for such purposes as humanely killing animals. Communication with prisoners may be prohibited where this prejudices the well-being of a victim of a crime committed by that prisoner. This is another example of the Government’s putting the interests of victims first. The department’s ability to read prisoners’ mail is provided for, consistent with the current ability of the department to monitor prisoners’ telephone calls. Electronic communication and written communication should be basically subject to the same rules. The forfeiture and disposal of items involved in the commission of offences in prisons are authorised.

This bill is important for the effective management of our prisons. The Corrections Act 2004 established a sound legislative framework for the operation of the corrections system. This bill now implements further improvements within that framework. I commend this bill to the House.

The Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) is the Government’s first public admission that all is not well in the Department of Corrections, and that substantial moves have to be undertaken to amend the Corrections Act 2004 in order to address many of the issues that have been raised with the Government by the National Party in Opposition over the last 2½ years. This bill is an attempt to deal with problems in the Department of Corrections that have otherwise been minimised and denied by the Government up until this point. Many of the matters the Minister raised in his first reading speech of course have been denied at various times by various Ministers of Corrections as being problems or issues in the prison system—denied not only through the media but in this House, during question time, over the last 2 to 2⅓ years.

National has indicated to the Government that it will support this legislation going to a select committee for its first reading, for two reasons. Firstly, many of the problems that this legislation purports to deal with would not even have come into the public arena had National not raised them. Secondly, this bill will give the Law and Order Committee an excellent opportunity to look at issues of contraband, prisoner communication, visitor contraband, and the like in our prison system. I know that Martin Gallagher, who is a firm but fair chairperson of that select committee, will allow wide-ranging evidence to be brought to the committee during the discussion of this particular bill, and I look forward to the Corrections Association, various staff members, and others coming before the committee to tell members about the practical nature of some of the issues that have been raised.

As the Minister said, the bill amends the Corrections Act in order to create new search, detection, drug-testing, and offence provisions to help to control contraband. That is a problem the previous Minister of Corrections stood in this House week after week and denied was a problem. It is a problem that the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections has made several statements on—in particular, in relation to staff-assisted contraband and so-called corruption. It was a problem the chief executive denied, saying that the figures in this area represented “a few bad apples” and “We are probably talking about five in the whole organisation”. Well, the referral of this bill to the Law and Order Committee will give an opportunity to test out those statements and to gather evidence that will help us to determine whether these issues need the type of approach that the Government is offering, or whether in fact we need to be tighter than the approach the Government is offering.

We will remember, of course, that these problems are not theoretical. We know, for example, that upon the release of Rachel Nāmana, she claimed that whilst she was in prison she had had access to a range of drugs, including P, and to a cellphone. We know that in 2006 a prostitute was allegedly found in the grounds of Rimutaka Prison after a cellphone was used. We know that in 2006 at least two inmates from Christchurch Prison were allegedly sending obscene text messages to others. Yet the Government told the House that those matters were isolated, one-off incidents, and now Phil Goff has stood in this House and been quite prepared to tell the country that the issues are serious enough to warrant amendments to the Corrections Act in order to bring in new, wide-ranging powers.

In fact, the question that the select committee needs to examine during the course of considering this bill is the sources of the contraband. Is it just the visitors to our prison system? Is it indeed, as has been alleged from time to time, the staff in our prison system? Those will be issues that a diligent select committee would look at thoroughly before recommending the implementation of a further course of action to the House.

We know, for example, that the number of prisoners testing positive for P in our prison system has increased steadily from 35 such identifications in 2001 to 139 in the 2006-07 financial year. We know that the Department of Corrections, in its own report in 2006, said that its Identified Drug User programme “provides little scope for prisoners identified as drug users to mitigate their actual demand for drugs” and that “a significant amount of drug use in prisons goes undetected.” We are not talking about a small problem here. We are talking about a problem that, after 8 years of denial, head-shaking, and counter-accusations, the Government has finally realised it can no longer ignore relating to issues that the Parliament has been raising with all six Ministers of Corrections since Labour took office at the end of 1999. We see today the Government finally realise that the polling it is doing shows it is being clobbered in the areas of law and order, our justice system, and the prison system. It is a problem that it has finally had to admit to and bring legislation to this House to allegedly deal with.

I note that the Minister is talking about a pretty short time frame for the report back of the bill. So I will be interested to see that the chairperson of the select committee does not hurry this matter unnecessarily, and that we all get an opportunity to deal with this legislation as we would like to.

One of the most interesting and complicated provisions or components of the bill will be the use of advanced technology to ensure the use of cellphones and the like is blocked, so they are unable to be used from within our prison system. We will spend some time, no doubt, in the select committee on looking at the issue of disabling and disrupting transmissions within prison boundaries and stopping unauthorised electronic communications. The Minister is right when he says that written communications should be treated no differently from oral communications, or indeed text communications, as part of that package. The use of cellphone jamming will be one issue that no doubt the committee will want a full technological explanation of. We do not want that technology to work only in some prisons or, worse still, in some parts of one prison. That would be an inadequate approach to that issue.

As I said, National will support this bill at its first reading, largely because it attempts to deal with issues that this party has been raising with the six Ministers of Corrections since 1999, and particularly in the last 2 to 3 years, where we have failed to get decent, straightforward answers to some of the questions that have been raised. This bill will give us the opportunity in the select committee to put those questions to a wide variety of witnesses.

I commence my contribution to this very important debate as chair of the Law and Order Committee, and I also note the presence of the deputy chair in the Chamber at present. I say that we are both very, very keen, along with the other members of the committee, to see the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) be referred to that committee. I think this bill is indeed appropriate and timely. We certainly look forward to taking submissions on it.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.