Estimates Debate — Vote Corrections

It is a pleasure to rise to speak about Vote Corrections in this debate, because this Government, under the stewardship of the Minister of Corrections, has made some giant leaps, if you will, in the corrections area. I will talk about a few of those areas.

The first one I will touch on is that the Minister of Corrections, Judith Collins, has made it very plain that, as the Minister, she backs Department of Corrections personnel. When one talks to Department of Corrections officers, one finds that they understand that. They understand it. They work in a particularly difficult employment situation, and to know that Minister Judith Collins has their back means an awful lot to them.

This Government has backed up that approach by overseeing the passage of the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill, which is now an Act of Parliament. That legislation has given the Department of Corrections—and the police, but I am talking about Department of Corrections officers now—comfort, if you will, in their difficult employment situation. If they have been assaulted—and they do get assaulted on an unfortunately regular basis, although it is decreasing, I might say—they now have the comfort of knowing that when it comes time for the perpetrator who has been accused of that assault to be sentenced, that aggravating factor will be taken into account by the court. That is the strongest signal possible by this Government and this Minister that this Government backs Department of Corrections officers.

It is interesting to note that there is increased public confidence in the Department of Corrections, is it not? No doubt that increased public confidence is because the Government has shown confidence in the corrections sector. Sixty-one percent of people now think that the department is doing a good job. What do we compare that figure with? We compare it with only 40 percent in June 2008. So in the term of this Government, 61 percent of people now think that the department is doing a good job. By the way, the department is doing a good job.

The Minister has introduced a number of things into our prison system that are having some beneficial results. We are told that drug and alcohol treatment is the single most effective programme that the Department of Corrections is running, and that there are early signs of decreased recidivism by those who have taken part. As well as that, a number of good things are happening. All prisoners, regardless of the length of their sentences, now have access to literacy training and are being given opportunities for trades training and work experience inside prisons. That is proving to be hugely beneficial for our prison population.

I think I need to talk about what is probably one of the single most significant aspects in this debate as far as the Department of Corrections is concerned, and that is that from 1 July this year all New Zealand prisons have been made smoke-free. What are the benefits of that change? Clearly, the benefit to prisoners is that they get the opportunity to break what is perhaps the habit of a lifetime. It is a habit that we all know is bad for health, is dirty, and is expensive. They have been given the opportunity to break that habit, and, more important, prisoners are being given the support they need to break the smoking habit.

Most important—and the Minister of Corrections, Judith Collins, has said this time and time again—making prisoners smoke-free provides protection for Department of Corrections officers. Previously, those officers had to breathe in second-hand smoke, which we know is even more dangerous than smoking directly. They no longer have to tolerate second-hand smoke. It is also known that at least twice a week in a New Zealand prison fires were being lit, putting officers and the prisoners themselves at risk from fire and smoke inhalation. It was a major problem for New Zealand prisons and for Department of Corrections officers, and Minister Judith Collins has dealt with it. Have there been any complaints? No, there have not been. In fact, I think that—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member’s time has expired.

If one was to assign a theme to this Budget, it would be about austerity and about getting the best out of every dollar spent. It would be about cutting Government spending to the greatest extent possible. That makes it all the more extraordinary that this Government is proposing to spend over $1 billion—in fact, over $1.1 billion—on what is effectively a failed model for corrections. A decade ago the Government’s vote on corrections was to the tune of $430 million. It has gone up some 250 percent in one decade, and that sort of increase in what is a flawed, failed mechanism is simply unsustainable. One wonders why we are perpetuating a completely failed mechanism. We are looking at something like $250,000 of capital expenditure for every bed we provide in prisons. We are spending something like $93,000 per year per head on each inmate in our prisons. This is a tragic waste of money and of human potential. It is a failed social experiment.

That, to his great credit, has been recognised by none other than the Minister of Finance, who is on record as calling prisons moral and fiscal failures, and how very right he is. He is rightly concerned not only about the waste of money but also, certainly, about the moral issue of locking up people. There is an absolute commitment to a punitive approach to imprisonment. We are determined, it seems, to punish people—and more of them—by locking them away for longer periods. That is a moral failure, as the Minister of Finance has quite rightly pointed out. The—shall we say—champion of this punitive approach, Mr McVicar of the organisation that I refuse to dignify with the descriptor “sensible”, referred to the Minister of Finance as having capitulated and waved the white flag. In fact, that reference to a moral and fiscal failure was the first show of good common sense that we have seen from the Government. We hope that the Minister of Finance will assert his influence within the Government to get a changed approach.

There have been minor changes. There have been some shifts, but they are very minor. I think some of the improvements are in things like drug and alcohol treatment and literacy programmes. We can probably sheet that home to the co-leader of the Māori Party Pita Sharples, who understands very well that the current “lock more of ’em up for longer” model is a failed mechanism. It is to his credit that he has achieved some small steps. But what is required is an absolute paradigm shift. Of that $1.1 billion, something like $850 million will be spent on simply locking up people in concrete boxes. That is a primitive approach to corrections. It is unacceptable, and we ought to move away from it.

The Wiri Prison, on which construction will begin once the tenders are signed, will have $370 million spent on storing up more trouble for us further down the track. Over 1,000 men will be accommodated in there. We will be putting in people largely for short sentences. They will come out no better off than they were when they went in. There will be no contribution to public safety, or to the well-being of either inmates or society, against which those people have offended. That $370 million represents something like 11 years of current expenditure on drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and it is simply ludicrous to waste that sort of capital on mechanisms that we know will simply fail, at a time when the country and the Government are capital-constrained.

The Department of Corrections itself tells us that something like 83 percent of inmates have some sort of drug and alcohol problem. We know that some 80 percent of offending is in some way linked to alcohol, drug, or substance abuse, and occurs when the offender is under the influence or comes from that sort of a background. Yet something like only 5 percent of sentenced prisoners are obliged to go through drug and alcohol abuse programmes. I do not criticise the judges for that; the programmes are simply not made available. We know that community-based programmes for alcohol and drug abuse treatment are significantly more successful and remarkably less expensive than prison-based activities, yet we continue to spend and to waste money by putting it into corrections centres simply to hold people in cells, rather than seeking to deal with the root problems.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate in relation to Vote Corrections. I take the opportunity to thank the Law and Order Committee, and the chair, for the courtesy that was displayed to the Department of Corrections in the very long time it had with the committee—as I recall, an hour and a half. It was interesting to hear the speaker who has just resumed his seat, David Clendon, make his comments about the Department of Corrections. I did not notice one question from his party in the transcript of the Law and Committee hearing in relation to the department—not one question to the department from that party. One has to wonder: if the Green members are suddenly so worried about the department and the imprisoning of people who are criminals, then, perhaps, they should have asked at least a question.

Can I also say that I would like to thank the staff of the Department of Corrections for the fantastic work they have done over the last 3 years—in particular, their embracing of what I required from them, which is excellence, accountability, and professionalism. They have come an awfully long way in a very short period of time. The first speaker on this vote, Mrs Dean, referred to the fact that, for instance, we now have no smoking in our prisons, from 1 July. That is a testament to the work of the Department of Corrections staff; a year-long programme of getting people in the prisons to understand that it was simply not acceptable for our staff to have to put up with air conditions that were 12 times worse than those in a normal home of a smoker, because of the fact that they were in a prison. They were the only people in New Zealand who were required to work in a smoke-filled environment, not a smoke-free environment. I would like to thank the people who did give support to the department at that time. They did not do it all alone; they had tremendous support from the Ministry of Health and Quitline. Over 6,000 prisoners are now using nicotine replacement therapy either by way of patches or lozenges, and I would like to thank the partners that the Department of Corrections has worked with in this area.

First off, it is most important that I say that it is the staff who have made the big difference. They needed leadership and they needed to know we had confidence in them, and they have repaid the people of New Zealand in spades. The public confidence in the Department of Corrections has gone up to 63 percent. The best it ever was under the previous Government was 40 percent. It has done a tremendous job. We have removed, for instance, things like razor blades from being stored in the cells of high-security prisoners. I listened to the previous speaker’s comments about the fact that prisons are terrible and they do not make people any better. What is the alternative—to leave them out there? Would people really like recidivist murderers, whom we do have in our high security prisons, left out in the community on home detention?

💬 David Clendon: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It concerns the previous speaker from the Government, Jacqui Dean, and now the Minister of Corrections. You will correct me if I am wrong, but I understand we are debating Vote Corrections. We are talking about the appropriation for this current financial year. What we are hearing is a great deal of history, what has been done, and some self-congratulatory statements—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I thank the member for his comments. When we are on the estimates, the member is correct. However, members also have some licence to expand. Chairpersons, over the period of the last few hours, have allowed that to take place, and I am continuing in that vein. I know the Minister will come back to the estimates, and she has mentioned what was in the report. She mentioned that at the beginning, and I am sure she will finish her last few minutes on that, as well.

Thank you, Mr Chairperson. Obviously, those members do not like to get some answers back, having asked all the questions. But, of course, the questions were asked today, not at the time when they could have got answers directly from the Department of Corrections. I say to that member, who obviously objects, that 1 July is actually part of this financial year, and if he has not worked that one out, then I think he should go back to school or get into one of the numeracy programmes we have at the Department of Corrections.

One of things that is really important in respect of the Department of Corrections is the case management model that it is introducing, which is actually quite different from what was trialled in previous years, which was to have Department of Corrections officers being case managers. The model is trying to address the issues we have of prisoners coming into the prisons and going through all sorts of programmes, with their main concern being what programmes are available to them and not necessarily having a planned approach about what the best route through prison is for them in order to get them into a situation where they come out better than when they came into the corrections system. The new model will be very much based around having trained case managers working with prisoners as they come in, looking to see what prisoners’ issues are. Do they have drug and alcohol addiction problems? Many will have. Can they read and write? After many years in the education system, can they read and write? If not, what can we do about it?

I think it is also important to triage in terms of whether these people are willing to change. I do not believe we should go around with rose-coloured spectacles thinking that every prisoner is simply waiting for someone to love them, care for them, and hug them. Frankly, I think that is a stupid view. It might be true for some, but it is not true for recidivist, violent offenders. However, I think we can change people’s lives, if they want to change, and I am very pleased with the Department of Corrections for the work it has been doing.