Corrections Amendment Bill

I move, That the Corrections Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The bill has been before Parliament since October 2011. The Law and Order Committee considered it last year and reported it back to the House with several improvements, and I would like once again to thank the committee for the changes it has made.

The bill’s priority to the Government has more recently been reinforced by amendments I introduced during its Committee stage removing any potential uncertainty about the lawfulness of the Government’s smoke-free prisons policy. Since its introduction in July 2011 the smoke-free prisons policy has been a great success, making an important contribution to the health of prisoners and of corrections staff. It has resulted in a 75 percent reduction in fires, and has significantly improved the overall air quality in our prisons. To ensure that the many things this policy has so far achieved can continue, it is important that this bill be passed in a timely fashion. I want to thank the members who have contributed to this outcome.

I do not intend to give a lengthy summary of the many other improvements this bill will make to the safe, humane, and effective operations of our prisons. They have generally been well traversed in previous stages. However, it is worth briefly going over how this bill will help to ensure that the corrections system performs at its best. Security measures in prisons will be improved by a number of changes, including changes to strip-searching provisions, making it an offence for prisoners to dilute urine samples provided for drug and alcohol testing, and enabling the Department of Corrections to obtain unlock codes for SIM cards that have been seized in prisons. Statutory responsibilities will better reflect how health services are delivered in prisons, and the health centre manager’s appropriate role in coordinating them. The bill contains amendments that will allow contractors to better fulfil the intent of the Government’s policy on contract-managed prisons. It will enable them to carry out the same custodial responsibilities, with the same lines of accountability to the chief executive, that are given to managers of public prisons. These are just some of the ways in which the bill removes barriers to the effective and efficient operation of the corrections system.

Although the legislative framework governing the corrections system is generally working well, I believe that the amendments in this bill will contribute significantly to the safe, secure, humane, and effective administration of custodial sentences. It will thereby assist in achieving the goals of protecting public safety and reducing reoffending. I commend this bill to the House.

The Labour Opposition worked constructively on the Corrections Amendment Bill before the Law and Order Committee, but for three predominant reasons we will be opposing this bill. The first and the most important reason is that this bill further entrenches the ideological view of the National Party that the deprivation of liberty of a person properly for having seriously offended against the law should be the subject of a profit motive, and should be run by the private sector as a commercial undertaking. Labour is fundamentally opposed to that ideological view of the National Party. Yes, we believe that prisons need to be run efficiently and cost-effectively, but no evidence—no evidence—was adduced to show that privatisation of prisons would achieve that particular outcome.

What this bill does is pass from the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections, a public servant, certain powers that will be delegated to private sector contractors, such as the security classification of an inmate and the temporary release of an inmate. Our view is that those are functions that are properly carried out by the Public Service, not by a private contractor whose principal motivation in running the business will be to maximise profit. When you are focused on maximising profit, you cut corners, and you cut corners most often by reducing staff. The evidence is very clearly there in private contracted prisons that they have cut staff, and the inmate-staff ratios have increased, to the detriment of public safety and to the detriment of the proper running of those prisons. I want to come back in a moment in a little more detail to the contract management of prisons and why we are against it.

The second reason that we are against this bill is that it puts in a provision relating to strip-searching of inmates that requires that the most intrusive, the most intimate, form of strip-searching applies across the board. At the moment there are two types of strip-searching. I understand that in a prison, where contraband can be smuggled into the prison, at risk to the inmate, at risk to the staff, and at risk to the way in which that institution is run, on occasions you do need strip-searching. But at the moment there is a routine strip-search, where the inmate is simply required to squat, undressed, so that something that may be concealed internally will come out if it is not deeply concealed. The other, more intimate, form of strip-searching actually involves the use of lights and mirrors to illuminate the genital and the anal areas of the inmate. That is deeply intrusive. It is deeply unpleasant, both for the inmate and for the prison officer. If this form of strip-searching was required in every case, then you would think that the group that would benefit most from that, the prison officers, would be in favour of it. Were they in favour? No, they were absolutely opposed to this. They said: “This is not necessary, this is not the right way to do it, and this is going to make our staff members more liable to assault by inmates.”

We have a clear problem and a clear trend in prisons at the moment of increasing levels of assault. We owe it to the people who have to work in those rather toxic environments to listen to what they are saying to us. They were saying to us: “Don’t do it this way. This is the wrong way to go.” It was not just prison officers who said that this is the wrong way to go; it was the Ombudsman. One of the representatives of the Office of the Ombudsmen is a former inspector of prisons, who said that this provision is liable to abuse, and gave examples of how strip-searching had been abused in certain cases, such as at the Mangaroa Prison, now the Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison, in order, specifically, to humiliate and to take advantage of prisoners. You have to listen to what the Office of the Ombudsmen says, because it is set up as the watchdog to advise Parliament as to the right way and the wrong way of going about things. The Law Society made the same point.

All of those groups would be able to draw on the fact that there is not even an increasing problem of smuggling contraband into prisons that might justify examining this approach. To the contrary, when Labour assumed office in 1999, the rate of positive testing of inmates for drugs was a whopping 36 percent. Over a third of the inmates were managing to get drugs in prison. Apparently, in those days it was easier to get drugs in prison than outside. We tightened up the rules governing searching and the security of prisons, we invested in more secure prisons, and that rate was reduced. Today I think it is at about 5 percent—from 36 percent of prisoners using drugs down to 5 percent. That actually suggests that what was being done was working, and that what is being proposed here is not necessary.

I specifically asked the manager of the Rimutaka Prison—one of our biggest prisons in this country—whether the more intimate sort of strip-searching would be a good way of stopping contraband from coming in. His answer was frank. He said: “If you internally conceal the contraband you’re trying to get in, this will not work.” Prison officers said to us: “If you really have good grounds to suspect that somebody is smuggling—it might be a weapon or it might be drugs or it might be something else—then you put them in a dry cell, nature will take its course, and whatever is concealed internally will emerge.” That is the way to do it, not what is proposed here. What I cannot understand is why the Minister of Corrections, when presented with this evidence by groups like prison officers, the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the New Zealand Law Society, ignored those submissions. Why were they ignored? We have never had an explanation from the Minister.

The third thing about this bill that concerns me is Supplementary Order Paper 171, in relation to smoking in prisons, which was brought in at the eleventh hour. The Labour Party and I, for one, are in favour of prisons being smoke-free, but we have in this country a constitutional provision. If you want to change the rules in areas like this, you bring the change in the form of a bill to the House, the House takes it to a select committee, we hear submissions, we get expert advice, we iron out the wrinkles in it, we get it right, and constitutionally we pass the change in rules. Is that what Judith Collins did? Absolutely not. Like Henry VIII she said by decree: “There will be no smoking in prisons.” She was warned that she did not have the constitutional authority to do that, but such is the arrogance of that Minister, the former Minister of Corrections, that she ignored the advice. And what do we get? We get a notorious prisoner in Auckland prison taking a case to court and defeating this Government—a prisoner defeating this Government—because he was able to work out that the Government had not done it right.

💬 Andrew Little: Back in court next week.

Yes, “Back in court next week.”, my colleague said, and that may well be the case. Why may that be the case? Because this was brought directly to the House without the opportunity for the select committee to examine it, without us as parliamentarians being able to ask the Ministry of Justice the searching questions to see whether it had got it right, and without the opportunity for submitters from the public and expert submitters to come to the select committee and say: “Yes, finally the Government has got it right.” But, no, the Government rushes it in. It brings it in without notice and without discussion at the select committee, and the chances are that it will get it wrong again.

I just want to say this finally, going back to the question of the privatisation of prisons. Serco is the private contractor given the job of running Mt Eden prison and the planned Wiri Prison. It went to the London Stock Exchange on 11 September of last year to boast that it would make $30 million a year out of running Wiri Prison—$30 million. So that is $30 million from the New Zealand taxpayer that will go out of this country to line the pockets of the private investors in Serco. Does Serco have a track record of running these things well? Not in Australia, not in the UK, and not here in Mount Eden. In the first year of running that prison it released three inmates who should not have been released, it kept in another three inmates who should properly have been released, and it allowed one to escape. It failed to meet 19 out of 37 performance standards that were set down for it. It is not efficient, it is not cost-effective, and the profit motive is wrong.

I am rising to speak to the third reading of the Corrections Amendment Bill. I accept that there are a number of points at which the Labour-Greens and National points of view diverge, and those have been well canvassed in this House and, indeed, through the select committee process. On that, I want to thank members from across the House who worked very proactively on this Corrections Amendment Bill, noting our differences and noting also that the Labour-Greens are putting in minority views on this bill. It is accepted that we have different philosophies around this kind of stuff, but, even so, it is my belief that this bill delivers on its intention to reduce barriers to the effective and efficient running of prisons.

Overall, current legislation does provide a pretty good framework for our corrections system, but there have been certain provisions identified as barriers to managing prisons in a manner that is safe and a manner that is secure and humane to prisoners, but is also effective and efficient, and this bill removes those barriers.

The main provisions of the bill include making it an offence to water-load before drug testing. Water-loading is when prisoners know there is a drug test coming along and drink litres and litres and litres of water, thus diluting their urine sample. The provisions in this bill now make it an offence for prisoners to do that. The provisions to make strip-searches of prisoners more effective by having just one procedure have been spoken of many times in this House during the course of the debate on this bill. My contention is that the use of lights and mirrors, and certainty around the procedure of strip-searching, which, let us face it, nobody likes—certainly, the prisoners do not like being strip-searched. Why would they? Certainly, prison officers and personnel do not like the process of strip-searching. But providing certainty around the circumstances, and certainty around the procedures of strip-searching—also, I would also argue with the Opposition’s contention that it is more intrusive. In fact, I would argue the opposite—that using a remote mirror and lighting system is personally less intrusive. So that is strip-searching.

Another provision in this bill, a most important one, is ensuring that the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections can delegate powers and functions to an organisation contracted to manage a prison. Again, it is understood that the Opposition cannot see past its philosophical objection to anyone else running a prison, but what we have seen during the course of the examination of this bill is the benefits that new thinking can bring into the prison system. I understand that the Opposition is closed to the possibility that benefits could come into the prison system. Using new experiences and using new personnel, but maintaining those very high standards that are maintained by the contracts, can have a beneficial effect, both on the corrections system and on the welfare of the prisoners.

Another provision in the bill is to allow money earned by prisoners working in prison to be paid to the chief executive, and some of that money to be applied to the prisoners’ board and other associated costs, such as child support. This is an important provision, bringing some responsibility back into prisoners’ lives.

Another provision of the bill enables the Department of Corrections to respond quickly and flexibly to technological advances or policy changes. One example that we had in mind was being able to access SIM cards out of cellphones, which, although in themselves illegal to be held in prison, can be used by corrections staff in the investigation of some offences. It also improves health services by legally recognising the role of health centre managers, giving them status in prisons.

Supplementary Order Paper 171, which was introduced by the Minister of Corrections, Anne Tolley, during the Committee of the whole House stage, ensures that prisons remain smoke-free. How anyone could have objection to that is quite beyond me. The Opposition might not like the process, but why would you oppose a measure, a Supplementary Order Paper, that reconfirms that the prison environment is to remain smoke-free? The benefits are clear. The benefits to prisoners are clear in terms of their personal health, and certainly the benefits to corrections officers are clear in terms of being able to work in a smoke-free environment. But also, most important, the incidence of fires in prisons has reduced almost to nothing. I think you have to stick your finger in a power socket to make a fire these days. OK, some people try that on, but the opportunities for lighting fires and then requiring prison officers to run and put out a fire in a hallway while other prisoners are locked in their cells, breathing dangerous gases, are now almost a thing of the past. I applaud the Minister for bringing in this Supplementary Order Paper and dealing with this problem.

I just to go back to the purpose of this bill, which is to ensure that front-line staff can manage prisons without putting their own health and safety at risk and without compromising the fair and humane treatment of prisoners. I commend the bill to the House.

I take a call on the Corrections Amendment Bill. Unlike the member who has just spoken, Jacqui Dean, I draw this House’s attention to what this bill is actually about and what it is part of. The Department of Corrections, when it is exercising its lawful authority, is part of that coercive arm of the State that is part of depriving people of their liberty. People go into the care and the custody of the Department of Corrections because the person concerned has been through the proper judicial processes and has been found guilty, therefore, of having offended against our criminal statutes and against society, and of offending so greatly that it is considered that they are best removed from society. That is what we are talking about: the deprivation of citizens’ liberty—those citizens who have transgressed, who have breached our moral codes and our criminal codes, and who must be removed.

Surrounding all of that process, until the point that they are placed into the custody of our Department of Corrections, there are constitutional provisions and constitutional safeguards. We all understand in our type of society and in our liberal democracy that when the State takes the responsibility of depriving citizens of their liberty, there will be appropriate checks, balances, safeguards, and oversight, and people will not be dealt with arbitrarily or improperly. It remains as important while they are in custody as it does when they are being treated by the police and the judicial system that there are safeguards and that they are not treated arbitrarily. The fact that the Labour Party and, no doubt, other Opposition parties stand for that idea in this Parliament puts us in distinct contrast to the Government, which increasingly and more frequently rides roughshod over basic constitutional principle. That is why we are opposed to this bill.

There are some sensible provisions in this bill that make some effective tidy-ups of the administration of the prisons and the Department of Corrections, but there are other aspects that are more insidious, not the least of which is the private prison approach that this Government favours. The reason why we are opposed to it is that we do not think that a private sector motive—the profit motive—should have any role to play when it comes to incarceration and the management of those who are incarcerated. When citizens have been through the judicial process, have been sentenced, and have been placed in the custody of our corrections and penitentiary system, they are under the care and custody of a system that is motivated by the need to protect society, to ensure that a person pays their penalty, and to ensure that, to the best extent possible, they get access to rehabilitation or the care they need to correct their behaviour. That is what the corrections system is about, and it is all motivated by the need to return a citizen to society in, hopefully, a better state than they were in when they went into the corrections system. They have done their time, they have paid their dues to the society that they have offended against, the Department of Corrections has done its bit to the best extent possible, and somebody can leave the system and then be reintegrated back.

None of that is helped or improved when they are placed in the custody of an organisation that has, on the top of all that, a motivation to maximise its profit—to maximise its revenue, to minimise its expenses, and, therefore, to maximise its profit. That adds an unacceptable slant to the role of a custodial organisation, and that is why we are opposed to the bill.

You can see the problem when you look in this legislation at two particular aspects: first of all, the strip-search provisions and, secondly, the delegation of power, or the delegation of authority, provisions in this legislation. They define the very problem that we are talking about. Let us look at the strip-search provisions. Presently in law the State corrections department has two forms of mandated search. Both are strip-searches. One allows the prison authorities to search a prisoner when they have come back from release, whether it is work release or community release; they can conduct a search. The second is also a strip-search, but it is much more intrusive. It allows the use of mirrors and lights to examine and explore the anal and genital regions of a prisoner. This legislation takes away the less intrusive means of strip-search and mandates only one form of strip-search. As my colleague Phil Goff has said—he was there, and he heard the evidence before the Law and Order Committee—the prison staff who have to administer those strip-searches are saying that they fear a bigger risk of reaction, violent reaction, from prisoners when faced with that form of strip-search. So why would you legislate for it? It is an abandonment of the balance and the fairness that we have had, knowing that these are prisoners who are subject to the powers of a custodial institution. They have now lost that balance when it comes to the strip-searching.

Then look at the next aspect of it. Clause 42 provides in new section 199AA that the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections can delegate his powers and authorities to a contract prison—that is to say, to a private prison. Subsection (3) of that section says: “A contractor or an employee of a contractor who appears to act under a delegation is presumed to be acting in accordance with its terms and conditions in the absence of evidence to the contrary.” Here is the kicker—here is the kicker. Subsection (5) says: “A delegation under this section does not affect the exercise of any function or power by the chief executive or the responsibility of the chief executive”—that is, of the Department of Corrections—“for the actions of any person acting under the delegation.”

Here we go. Under the private prison the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections issues a delegation of power—issues a delegation of authority. It gets exercised. It is presumed that it is being exercised in accordance with the power, and if it turns out that that is wrong, who is liable? The Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections—not the private prison owner, but the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections. Who does the prisoner go to for their remedy? They go to the public purse. They go to the public official: the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections. There is no constraint on the private prison. It can act as it wishes, and it will claim all along the way that it is acting to provide the best service it can under its contract, knowing, and with this Government knowing, that it is entitled to maximise its profit—it is entitled to seek revenue, minimise its expenditure, and, therefore, maximise its profit. And if it goes wrong, as it surely will, under this provision, who pays for the mistake? Who ultimately gets called to account? The Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections. And who will pay the chief executive’s legal bill and any compensation that follows? It will be the taxpayer. That is how good the private sector has got it under this Government. Yet again, it is another deal that benefits the private sector at the expense of the taxpayer. How many more times are we going to see this? How many more times are we going to see this?

The next most insidious aspect of this bill is the fixing up of the problem with the no-smoking policy. It was declared from on high by the then Minister of Corrections, Judith Collins, it was found to be unlawful at the suit of a serving prisoner, and now Parliament is being asked to fix it up, not that the members of this Parliament have had the benefit of any oversight, testing of the evidence, or testing of provisions brought in by the Minister. They were introduced as a Supplementary Order Paper and brought in at the last minute to fix up the Minister’s mistake.

Well, I go back to the point I began with. Too often, and too much, this Government is seeking to ride roughshod over constitutional propriety, and it is not acceptable. It is bad enough that those imprisoned by our judicial system, those who have offended against our society, will be sent off to private prisons where there are no real checks and balances, and where the failures of the private prison system will be visited on the taxpayer when things go wrong, but now we are being asked to ride roughshod over the protections that this Parliament ordinarily stands up for when a Minister wants to do as they wish. We have not been able to exercise a protection against it, but it is happening in this legislation. It is happening in this bill, and it is not acceptable. For those reasons, we will be opposing this legislation. It is bad for the prison system—it will not help the prison system—it certainly will not help the prisoners, and it will not help the people of New Zealand.

I think the best thing one can say about this bill, the Corrections Amendment Bill, is that the title recognises that we are in dire need of amending our corrections system. At every level—at the legislative level, at the policy level, at the level of practice—we need some fundamental change. We need a comprehensive review, an oversight, of the legislation and the policy and the practice in our prisons. We need, effectively, a culture change in terms of both how we develop policy and legislation and how we implement that in our prisons. Sadly, this bill does not go beyond the title in terms of effecting that real, very necessary, and much-needed change. This bill makes some minor tweaks, it meddles around the edges, and it achieves one or two beneficial outcomes, but for the most part the outcome of the changes in this legislation will be negative. They will not serve the ends that the bill sets out to serve. They will be negative outcomes, rather than positive ones.

I just reference the chair of the Law and Order Committee, who mentioned once again the benefits that would flow from this bill, and I say again that the question must be raised: benefits for whom? It would seem, clearly, that the private sector will potentially benefit very much from the embedding of further provisions that enable and facilitate the entry of private sector operators into the corrections system. As we heard from Mr Goff, Serco potentially will benefit to the tune of 30 million New Zealand taxpayers’ dollars each and every year after the opening of the white elephant at Wiri.

Often one hears that the corrections system is in a state of crisis. Commentators often refer to the crisis in our prisons. I actually think that is the wrong language. “Crisis” suggests something sudden, something unexpected, something acute, when actually what we have in our prisons is a chronic situation—a chronic condition of failure. That failure has been accelerating over at least the last 20 years. That chronic condition of failure is represented financially, for example, in the fact that we have seen something like a 250 percent increase in the amount of taxpayer money going into prisons over the last decade or so. In the early 2000s we had a corrections budget of some $460 million - odd a year. Last year it went close to $1.4 billion. That increased expenditure might be acceptable if we were seeing better social outcomes, but equally we are failing there. We are not breaking the cycle of offending and reoffending. Up until a year or so ago, the prison population was increasing dramatically. Failing—a chronic condition of failure. This bill does very little to deal with the key drivers of that failure or the reality of it.

The advancement of this failure, if you like—the decline in the well-being of our prisons, the decline in the economic value of our prisons—has increased considerably, due in part to what I have been thinking of more and more as an arms race. We saw this over a decade or so, driven I think by this false perception of what has been called penal populism—that is, the flawed idea that the public was demanding more and more serious and longer sentences, the false perception that was created by organisations like the Sensible Sentencing Trust, which is sensible in name only. The media were complicit in building this public perception that crime was on the increase in New Zealand, that it was becoming more dangerous to be a New Zealander, and that public safety was being degraded. None of that, in fact, was true. None of the evidence supports that penal populism, which drove policy in a very unfortunate direction for at least a decade.

I would like to refer to a speech made just a few nights ago by Kim Workman, director of the Rethinking Crime and Punishment project, director of the Robson Hanan Trust, and a well-respected person with an extraordinary depth and breadth of experience in corrections. In his speech he set out by saying he “would consider the idea that ‘the wellbeing of a nation is measured not by the absence of disorder, but by the presence of justice.’ ” It is very hard to see that we have improved or enhanced the delivery of justice in New Zealand over the last decade or more when one considers as one indicator the number of people we lock away in our prisons every year. In the late 1980s things began to go very wrong. In 1987 we locked up about 91 out of every 100,000 New Zealanders. By 2009 that number had increased to 200 per 100,000 of population—200 out of every 100,000 New Zealanders by 2009 were being put in prison. It has dropped marginally now. We are down to about 194 per 100,000 of population. We desperately need to address the root causes, to ask ourselves why our prison population is exploding to this extent. This Corrections Amendment Bill, sadly, does little or nothing to address those core questions, to provide any significant answers. To put that number, 194—190 to 200 per 100,000—in context, we look at Germany, where the number is 83; France, where it is 102; and Australia, where it is 130. We have long since caught up with Australia in terms of imprisoning people; we have well exceeded their numbers—not an achievement we should or could be proud of. With the numbers around 190 to 200, we are in company with countries like Moldova, Slovakia, Gabon, and Namibia. This is probably not company that we would aspire to in terms of locking people away in our society rather than dealing with the root causes of crime and offending, and finding better ways of breaking that cycle of offending.

It gets worse. We imprison something like 700 Māori per 100,000 of population—something like six times higher than the non-Māori rate. It is unacceptable that an ethnic minority, our Treaty partner, is being imprisoned at a rate something like six times that of the non-Māori population. Māori are remanded in custody at a rate something like 11 times higher than the non-Māori rate of remand in custody. We have to drill a little bit deeper than fiddling around the margins and talking about efficiency and effectiveness in delivering our prison services. We need to drill a lot deeper than that and address some of the root causes of these inequities.

The point is routinely made that—in fact, it ought to be routinely made. It is not well enough understood that in terms of the relationship between crime and the imprisonment rate, nowhere in the world is there a linear, cause and effect, solid relationship between the imprisonment rate and the crime rate. The imprisonment rate is not a measure of the crime rate. It is a consequence of legislation, of policy, and of practice in our prisons and elsewhere. The longer people stay in prison, the more likely they are to reoffend, not less.

The very late presentation of the endeavour to undo the mischief, or what has been called the monumental stuff-up, of the smoking ban, has been addressed—the point was made by a Government speaker that the Opposition seemed to oppose the process by which that ban was imposed. I would have to say we are in very good company. We are alongside the High Court; Justice Gilbert called the ban “unlawful, invalid and of no effect”. And, yes, a long-term inmate at Pāremoremo prison has successfully taken the Government to court and won. That case is again to come before the court in a matter of a few days, and the court will be confronted with legislation that raises two fundamental constitutional issues, which Supplementary Order Paper 171 did: the question of the imposition of retrospective criminal liability, which it effectively does impose, and the removal of the right of access to court for a wrong that has been done by retrospectively changing the law. It is unacceptable. Whatever one’s views about the benefits or otherwise of reducing or eliminating smoking from prisons, it is unacceptable for this House to accept that that process, that illegal process, should be allowed to stand—should be put right by a retrospective change put in at the last minute to a bill that was never intended to address such a situation.

I would like to say that Mr Noam Chomsky has said: “The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have.” We have in this House an absolute responsibility to make the corrections regime better. This bill does not achieve that. We will be opposing this. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to take a call on this, the third reading of the Corrections Amendment Bill. I would like to talk a just little bit about Serco. I think it has had a bit of an unfair hearing in the House here tonight. Having met some of the staff of Serco, I would just like to commend them and recognise them for the professional job that they do, for the passion that they bring to their job, and for the excellent performance and service that they are providing to New Zealand.

For some reason—I do not know why—Labour has got something against the private sector. This is not a new model. Serco has been providing these services for a long time to many other countries around the world very successfully. This is not a new model. The Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections himself said that the exchange of ideas that they are getting between Serco and the Department of Corrections is helping them in important areas like prisoner rehabilitation. If Serco is performing so badly, if the Department of Corrections is doing so poorly, then explain to me some of the results that we are seeing within our Department of Corrections. Public confidence in corrections is 53 percent higher than what it was in June 2008. Positive—

💬 Andrew Little: That’s not because of Serco.

Well, Serco is a part of this. Serco is making a contribution to these results. Positive random drug-tests were at a record low last year, down from 13 percent in 2007-08 to just 4 percent in 2011-12. During the course of Prisoner Skills and Employment Strategy 2009-12, the number of prisoners in vocational training, employment, and literacy and numeracy education increased to 7,529—up from 5,359. That is a great result, and members of the Law and Order Committee and the chair, I am sure, will remember the excellent trip that we did to Rimutaka Prison. Something that really stuck in my mind that I thought was an excellent programme was that we got to visit the prisoners there who were learning new skills like bricklaying, building, engineering skills—skills that actually will go a long way to contributing towards the massive tasks that we have in the rebuild in Christchurch.

So I would just like to say that I support this model and I think there is benefit for the country and for the taxpayer in using it. We were not afraid to go out and involve the private sector in improving services. If it means that we are getting a better service, and if it means that we have more taxpayer money available to spend in areas like health and education, then it is a very good programme. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on this Corrections Amendment Bill. In times past we confronted great challenges not with slogans and silly appellations for parliamentary bills but by deploying our best and brightest in search of facts that would lead to meaningful and realistic solutions. New Zealand First is dedicated to ensuring that our nation’s prisons, probation service, and other places of detention are operated in a manner that will comply with legislation and laws of our country, and, furthermore, that international human rights principles are upheld through the introduction of robust and vigorous policies, which will give New Zealand better opportunity to address one of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world.

We all share in the notion of promoting a fair and effective criminal justice system in which incarceration is used as a last resort. Its purpose must be to prepare prisoners for release and for productive, law-abiding lives at the earliest possible time. Community involvement and better education are important to form the foundation of rehabilitation and reintegration. This is not necessarily restricted just to reading and writing, but also includes practical life experiences. These experiences help obtain a better understanding of our society, including the importance of those traditional family and community values. More important, our goal is to reduce reoffending, instead of, like the current Government, building more prisons—as if it is in the business of growing criminal offending.

This country must focus on creating more employment to redirect offenders’ focus from community crimes in order to become law-abiding citizens of our nation. The growing gap between those who have and those who have not, the persistence of poverty and its relation to crime, are real and present a danger to social cohesiveness in New Zealand. We as parliamentarians must ensure that conditions of confinement are constitutional and consistent with health and safety regulations and human dignity. For too long now, New Zealand’s corrections policy makers have been too busy or preoccupied in developing plans, in order for many of them to stay employed, knowing very well that those plans have failed for so many years. These plans are based on what is happening in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Western Europe. For far too long New Zealand’s corrections decision-making advocates have been too busy trying to look busy without doing anything at all, just so that they have something to report on, regardless of whether they are successful or not. It is no wonder that this Government is becoming increasingly famous for lip-service and window dressing. It is time we had some accountability, and that includes this current National Government.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Say something nice!

I am saying everything that is nice, Maurice Williamson. The current incarcerated population among young generations, especially Māori and Pacific people, can no longer—[Interruption]—and should no longer be tolerated, David Bennett. It is simply not acceptable.

However, this Corrections Amendment Bill can be viewed as a way forward, with some progress. The goals set out in this bill will result in a criminal justice system that respects individual rights and increases compliance with public safety within the corrections environment. Having legislation that defines liability on property claims will not only save money and time, but also stipulate better guidelines for corrections staff and outline the responsibility that is required from prisoners. We all acknowledge that prison reform must address problems currently plaguing the incarcerations system, including private prisons run by and for profit organisations or corporations, who drive the demand for more people to be locked up while at the same—

💬 Mark Mitchell: You don’t believe that.

—ducking public scrutiny and accountability, Mark Mitchell. And what of the smoking ban? Jacqui Dean has a lot to learn about the prison environment—

💬 Jacqui Dean: Here we go.

—and how it operates, Jacqui Dean. Listen to this: tobacco is an insidious drug. It is. Some say that it is harder to kick than heroin—and I am sure the member Mark Mitchell will know that from his previous employment.

Initially, a massive drive was put in place to rid prisons of tobacco. Prisoners were put on notice, and targets and time lines were met. Following that there has been little, very little, in the way of education and ongoing treatment to enable prisoners to stop smoking and stay smoke-free. Yes, I understand that a few nicotine patches have been handed out. However—however—many of these have been brewed up and mixed with tea leaves for the desperate to smoke. What has happened is an extension to the black market in prisons so that, along with drugs, tobacco has become a real money-spinner for prisoners and gangs. There is a constant flow of prisoners through the corrections system, many of whom stay a few months then they go back to an environment where smoking is the norm, then return again. These people will not kick the habit with punitive measures, while prison staff are expected to be custodians as well as case officers, welfare officers, counsellors, providers of recreational activities, and more.

Better rehabilitation plans will help. Denying prisoner access to suitable rehabilitative initiatives, plus restricting appropriate programmes with suitable cultural perspectives, inhibits successful rehabilitation of prisoners and can exacerbate or create mental illness. Prisons should focus on safety in rehabilitation and effective use of suitable providers—providers who deliver real outcomes for prisoners instead of providers engaged by staff for the sake of ticking the box regardless of whether the programme works or not. I was rather astonished to be advised that bureaucratic procedures and more red tape have once again hindered progress in the rehabilitation of Pacific prisoners at the Vaka Fa’aola Pacific Focus Unit at Spring Hill Corrections Facility. Although corrections officers have requested more community involvement in Pacific programmes, and they have been successful in the past 4 to 5 years, it is a shame when some ill-advised manager who claims to be an expert and appears to think he or she knows better drives the local communities, to whom these prisoners are more likely to return to, to give up on supporting our prisons. Prisoners have been treated poorly and sometimes unfairly, and yet these are the very people whom the Department of Corrections and this country need to assist with the rehabilitation of men and women in prison, in addition to our combined efforts to reduce offending and reoffending.

So let me remind members of this House, especially the members of the National Government, that Lyndon B Johnson’s words were these: “You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.” So we do support the bill, but we do oppose the smoking ban along with other loopholes that it has created. Thank you.

I was looking forward to a speech from Richard Prosser, who actually heard the submissions on the Corrections Amendment Bill, but I suppose even Asenati Lole-Taylor is more diplomatic than Richard Prosser. But it is a pretty fine line there between the two. Let me tell her what success in the Department of Corrections is. Success in the Department of Corrections, Asenati Lole-Taylor, is prisoner education and training up from 5,500 places in 2008 to 13,500 places now. Positive random drug-tests in corrections are at their lowest rate ever, prisoner drug treatment has doubled, and public confidence in the department is up 53 percent. So if you want to talk about lip-service, which is all we got from the other side, we are actually seeing results in corrections as a result of policies implemented by National Party Ministers of Corrections.

I want to turn to this bill and outline why I think some of the arguments being put forward by the Opposition are quite flawed. The Opposition is talking quite a bit at the moment about strip-searches. Those members think the strip-searches that are proposed in the bill are absolutely evil—the fact that we are extending it and making that the norm within the Department of Corrections is bad. Well, actually, that form of strip-search is already in the Corrections Act—the Act passed when those members were in Government. If they are saying that that form of strip-searching is so bad, why was it even in the legislation put forward by Labour in 2004? In fact, what we are doing is simply making it easier and making it safer for prison officers. To use the more invasive strip-search right now, the officer has to believe that the individual has something on them. The less rigorous strip-search that they use most actually does not pick everything up. We are making it safer for the officers and safer for the prisoners by giving the officers more scope to pick up any instrument, any issues, that the prisoners will have on them. We are, in fact, making it safer for the prisoners and safer for the officers this way.

On smoke-free prisons, it is interesting to hear the arguments being put forward. Members opposite are effectively saying that “We do not like smoking in prisons. We think smoking should be banned in prison, but we are too good to vote for this piece of legislation. We are too good to vote for this piece of legislation because we do not like Judith Collins.” Well, actually, she was taking a pretty bold step by making the policy decision that she did. It turns out that the courts tended to agree with a prisoner in this case, so we are sorting out the legislative issue. But the key question here is whether you support smoking in prison. By voting against this legislation Opposition members are saying—and David Clendon is smiling over there—that they are voting to support smoking in prisons. If their preferred approach, of voting this bill down, was successful, then smoking in prisons would be allowed. If you do not support smoking in prison, then vote for this piece of legislation.

The ideological point of view that they are putting forward around the chief executive delegation is another strange piece of argumentation. They are saying that we do not like private prisons, but, you know, they are there and so they should perform much better. But when we put in place some legislation that will help them perform better, they are opposing that too. All we are doing in this legislation is allowing the chief executive to delegate some functions that would normally be delegated to prison managers, allowing those functions to be delegated to the prison manager at the Serco-run prison. Let us just remind them that Serco is running at a 95 percent performance rate—meeting 95 percent of its targets. We are going to make it easier for it to do its job, so it can perform even better. But Opposition members are saying they do not want to see it work, they do not want to see it succeed, because they do not think that privately run prisons are good. But, actually, we are seeing some pretty good results there. It is working well, and this bill will make it easier for them to operate.

This is a pretty sensible bill. It will do some good things. It will make it easier for the Department of Corrections, easier for the people working in the prisons, and safer for the people working there and for the prisoners. That is why it should be supported by this House.

I was not entirely sure what I was going to say about the Corrections Amendment Bill, until I heard Jami-Lee Ross speaking. He has given me so much material to work from, so I thank him for that.

I want to reassure Jami-Lee Ross that the Labour Party does not support smoking in prisons, but what we do support is Ministers acting lawfully, which is something that Judith Collins, the Minister of Justice, does not seem to be able to do. One would think that the Minister of Justice might be able to come up with policies and regulations around prisons that actually complied with the law, but, no, apparently not. We have had Anne Tolley come into the House and table a Supplementary Order Paper to fix up Judith Collins’ mess, because Judith Collins had made decisions that did not comply with the law. The Labour Party does not support smoking in prisons, but we think that if we are going to remove smoking in prisons, we should actually do it in a manner that is lawful. This is not lawful. That is the problem. Judith Collins acted in a manner that was not lawful, and now the Government is having to rush legislation through Parliament to fix up her mess. That is what the Labour Party has a problem with. We think the Minister should actually have got it right in the first place.

Did the ban on smoking in prisons go through select committee scrutiny? No, it did not. So now we are passing a law that has not had public scrutiny. Personally, I do not want to see smoking in prisons. I do not want to see smoking in prisons, but I want to see the laws that we make in this House subject to appropriate public scrutiny. That is what the Standing Orders allow for, that is what the public expect, and that is not what they are getting under this National Government. It thinks it is OK for it to retrospectively fix up its mistake, its making an unlawful decision, by passing a law, by way of an amendment to this bill, that fixes up its mistake, without having any public scrutiny of that.

I have a problem with that. If Jami-Lee Ross does not have a problem with it, I ask him why he does not have a problem with it. Why does he have so little respect for the democratic process that he thinks it is OK for the Government to do that? Nothing, nothing at all—nothing at all from Jami-Lee Ross. He has no defence of the National Government pushing through an amendment to fix up Judith Collins’ unlawful decision. He has no problem with it. It seems to be OK to Jami-Lee Ross and the National Party. Well, it is not OK to the Labour Party. We think the Government should do it right the first time, and if it does make a mistake, it should at least go through the appropriate process to fix it and allow public scrutiny of that piece of legislation.

Jami-Lee Ross talked a little bit about what success looks like in the corrections system. Does success look like three improper inmate releases, three wrongful detentions, an escape, and a 72 percent failure rate to put in place inmate plans? Is that success in the prison system? Is that what this National Government regards as successful? Is that what it regards as successful? Are those things successful? Let me run through those numbers again: three improper inmate releases, three wrongful detentions, an escape, and a 72 percent failure rate to put inmate plans in place. Is that being successful? Is that what the National Government regards as successful? Is it successful? Because that is Serco’s actual rate. That is the actual success rate for its current prison, for the private prison that we currently have in place. It is an absolute failure, but the Government seems to think that that is OK.

Let us talk more about the Wiri private prison. The Wiri private prison—let us talk a little bit more about that. It is simply a moneymaking opportunity. That is what it is. It is a moneymaking opportunity. We know that because Serco has told everybody that. Serco has told everybody that it intends to make—I think I have got the figure here for how much it is intending to make. It is quite a significant amount of money that Serco is intending to make out of this private prison—30 million bucks. Thirty million bucks Serco thinks it can make out of running a private prison. That is 30 million bucks that could go into prisoner rehabilitation or any number of other things that the Government might be able to do with that money. Serco is going to take it as profit and ship it offshore. We think that Government money going into corrections should be going into prisoner rehabilitation.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

It is a great pleasure for me to speak on the third reading of the Corrections Amendment Bill. I do not need to deal in too much fact, as I have had some very auspicious previous speakers who have done that for me. It is the first opportunity I have had to open the batting after a break, and I guess I am going to last about as long as the New Zealand openers often do, unfortunately. But I just want to talk about a couple of the previous speakers very briefly. It amazes me that we had 9 years of Labour Government. It did nothing about this sector other than fill the prisons up, and it is now blaming the Government and saying it has all of the answers—I am surprised it did not use them at the time. I think that is the first point I wanted to make.

National came to the Government benches some 4 years ago aspiring to provide for a safer New Zealand, to deliver better public services to all New Zealanders, and to improve our quality of life. An efficient and effective corrections system is the catalyst for the first of these, and the result of the second. The Government has a target to reduce reoffending by some 25 percent by 2017. Having been through the select committee consideration of this bill, I am encouraged to believe that this is achievable.

I also believe that further improvement under the current Department of Corrections management is very achievable. It is achievable because of a heavy investment in education and training of both prisoners and prison staff, and the introduction of GPS technology, allowing low-security prisoners who would previously not have been able to take part in some of those outside work and training to do so.

Much has been made by the Opposition of the strip-search conditions in this bill, and in a very graphic fashion as well. I must say I found the process a little testing myself, until I understood the issues that these prisons face with the smuggling of both contraband drugs and, indeed, weapons into the prisons. Certainly these strip-searching clauses are needed in this bill. The provisions of this bill have been well covered by my predecessors, as I have said, and I am confident, like my chair of the Law and Order Committee, Jacqui Dean, and my Minister of Corrections, Anne Tolley, that this bill goes a long way toward having an efficient and effective corrections service that will take New Zealand into the future. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry, I understand this is a split call, so you have 5 minutes.

Thank you very much. It is my first opportunity, I guess, to take first drop on this Corrections Amendment Bill, and to speak to this bill for the first time. In doing so, I would like to acknowledge my colleague Charles Chauvel, who actually opened the batting for us on a number of occasions in both the first and second readings. I guess I would like to pay tribute to him. I have had a look at what he has had to say. I am a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, but one of the core issues that we have in terms of this piece of legislation is that at the end of the day, yes, we want people to go to prison when they have done something wrong against society, and we think that they deserve to be incarcerated, but with that incarceration there actually has to be an opportunity for them to change their lives around. I think that for some people who go to prison we talk about rehabilitation, but the reality for some of the people in our prison system is that it is about habilitation; it is about learning the skills needed to be members—functional members—of our society.

I have had the privilege of going to the Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility at Wiri in my electorate, Manurewa, and I think that a number of the initiatives that they are trying to deal with at the women’s prison really speak to some of the systemic issues that a lot of people in prison face, which is actually about coming from abusive backgrounds and living abusive lives. I think that what we want, more than anything, is a justice system and a corrections system that are going to enable people to get the necessary skills so that they can be productive members of our society. I have worked with a number of leaders in my community, one of whom, the Rev. Mark Beale, has spent much time in that Wiri prison, working with the people who are in the prison, and trying to engage with them in a very humane and respectful manner. What I do not like about some of the aspects of this bill is the fact that actually we are removing the dignity and the respect that people actually need to leave prison in a better place. A lot of people who go to prison, I believe, when you understand the social circumstances that have actually driven why they are there, deserve opportunities to have better lives.

It is a very important issue for my electorate. I am going to have a number of families who will move into my electorate with the building of the Wiri Prison for men. What I want to see in a corrections system, in a prison system, is for people to be treated with dignity and with respect. So one of the biggest issues that we do have, particularly with the search and surveillance issue—in fact, I would like to highlight, for example, a summary of the Human Rights Commission’s submission, which opposed the extension of search powers and the removal of safeguards around strip-searches. Why did it do that? It did that because, fundamentally, if we want people to lead better lives, and to, yes, pay whatever price the justice system has deemed of them, at the end of the day we do not want people to go back into prison again. At the heart of any corrections system, I believe, should be the intention to help people correct their lives, not to further punish them, not to treat them inhumanely, and not to treat them disrespectfully. And so I am pleased to have had an opportunity, obviously, to talk to this third reading debate.

One of the other themes that I wanted to pick up on really was introduced by the Minister of Corrections in her first reading speech, where she said that “The statutory purpose of the corrections system is to improve public safety and contribute to the maintenance of a just society.” I believe in a just society. I believe in everybody having a fair go. I think every New Zealander would. I think there are aspects of this bill that will not enable all New Zealanders to have a fair go and to actually try to transform their lives. The biggest issue that we have is recidivism. Let us get real. We have got a system where all it is doing is providing opportunities for people to go back into prison. We cannot afford to do that. We cannot afford to do that, because it is a waste of human potential. So if we want to create different pathways for people, then fundamentally we have got to—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Her time has expired.

I follow on from that member, Louisa Wall, in also providing my first speech on this bill, the Corrections Amendment Bill, tonight. As it is the third reading, it does seem rather late, but there are several core points of principle that explain the Greens’ opposition to this bill that I would like to outline. Firstly, and it is an issue that is close to my heart, we are opposing this on the basis that we see it as another erosion of human rights. When somebody has committed a crime and is sentenced to a punishment, we have a system that actually acknowledges that the incarceration is the extent of that punishment. There should not be any further erosion of their human rights just because they are in prison. This bill, we believe, will erode those rights in terms of extending the strip-search, potentially limiting access to health care, and also requiring the person to pay more money out of their pocket towards costs that have not necessarily been defined.

We are very, very pleased that the Government has listened and engaged in the select committee process, in respect of the submissions from the Labour Party and the Green Party in regards to extending strip-searches without managerial approval. That now has conditions on it, and the ability to put prisoners in maximum security has also been taken out. That is a win from our perspective.

However, the bill and the changes have not gone far enough, sadly. I do not think we should need to explain in this House why human rights are important. But I just get the sense, and I have been very surprised by it in my involvement in this political process, that there does seem to be a need to explain the importance of human rights. The Human Rights Commission and many other submitters noted that respect for human dignity is a fundamental and universal human rights obligation. It is not something we can put conditions on. That is just something in itself. When we developed these human rights, our thinking around that post World War II was that there were really clear and obvious reasons for holding human rights dear, and I worry that we are losing that sense of consciousness.

Beyond that in itself being important, there are also very clear reasons for supporting the human rights of prisoners, because supporting them is clearly linked to people’s reintegration and rehabilitation. It reduces conflict in prisons and increases the chances of rehabilitation, and, ultimately, that is what gives us a safer society. It is a very sad thing to see legislation continually coming before this House that bit by bit erodes the human rights of prisoners. Ultimately we are all going to pay by having a less safe society.

I want to just speak a little bit more in terms of the strip-searches. I have heard other colleagues in the House raise the issue that we have clear evidence that those people who are in our prisons, although they have committed crimes, are actually some of our most vulnerable people, particularly the women; the majority of them have experienced sexual abuse and violence in their lives. To increase strip-searches of them and to make that mandatory if they are needing to be put into detention to protect them seems unusually cruel to me, particularly when the evidence shows that it will do nothing to protect them or even act as a safeguard against the entry of contraband into the prisons. So here we are actively invading people’s privacy and bodily integrity for an ideological gain, which is the only thing I can see in it. That, to me, is a tragic thing, I have to say. Finally, another reason that we are opposing this bill is that it has been—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, her time has expired.

We have had several cricketing analogies since the dinner adjournment, and although a few of the previous speakers expressed a degree of uncertainty about their batting ability, I can say with absolute confidence that I will not be troubling the scorers. There have been times when you, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, have raised your finger before to indicate that my innings is over, but it is not going to happen now. I simply want to indicate my support for this Corrections Amendment Bill. I want to thank both those who have contributed to a constructive debate and, in particular, those who have worked hard on the bill. It is a significant piece of legislation. I want to acknowledge in particular those who work in our corrections system. It is a demanding job. It is one that many would shy away from, but by and large we are very well served in this country by those who work in our Department of Corrections. I thank them, and I want to put that on record. I believe that this bill will further enhance public safety. It has measures that I believe will reduce reoffending, and I fully support it.