Victims of Crime Reform Bill

First of all, I was very patient with the Associate Minister of Justice answering the questions in Part 2 of the Victims of Crime Reform Bill. Unfortunately, he neglected to take any call at all to answer the questions on Part 3. Maybe that is because he did not feel he had enough time to do so. So perhaps you would give him the latitude, Mr Chairman, to enable him to answer the two very clear questions, which I think I repeated several times in Part 3 of the bill. So you have not missed out, Minister. There is still the chance to come back and answer a couple of questions, which I am sure members of your own party would like to hear the answers to, just as much as members on this side of the Chamber would. So talk to your officials, if you do not know what is going on because you are not the Minister, and the real Minister ain’t here and we all know why she ain’t here—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order!

Just in passing, Mr Chairman.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No. Order!

Just in passing. Can I come to Part 4 of the bill, which is “Amendments to Sentencing Act 2002”. Again, the amendments that are proposed in Part 4 are, I think, sensible. They enable victims to be compensated by losses not covered by the Accident Compensation Corporation, and we would expect that to be the case. They provide more opportunities for victims to participate in the restorative justice process.

The interesting thing about this is that the Minister said earlier that restorative justice works and it improves outcomes—I think, Minister, you said in 37 percent of the cases. Restorative justice, which was in the Victims’ Rights Act, which I pushed through the House in 2002, is a good process, but, again, for it to work it needs to be properly resourced. It is not something we force on the victim. It is entirely in accord with the wishes of the victim. If the victim wishes to have a process, they should be able to. This is about the victim’s choice. If they do not wish to have that process, then that should be up to them. They should not be under any pressure to become involved in a restorative process. But if the evidence is that we are getting positive outcomes and it does provide choices for victims, I do want to be reassured that the resourcing is in place for the restorative justice process, because, again, if I look at the regulatory impact statement, it says that the current service provision is limited, so the court can be required to refer cases only where the services are available. So perhaps the Minister could tell us in what percentage of cases the services are available, and in what percentage of the cases the victim actually badly wants a restorative process but, because of under-resourcing, that victim cannot go through the process.

Can the Minister please quantify when the restorative process will be available to a victim who very much wishes to participate in it, and when it will not be available? And if the percentage of cases where the process will not be available is quite high, which I suspect to be the case, what is the Minister going to do to ensure that the resourcing is made available so that the victim’s right—in this case, once again, it is not a theoretical right but a right that can actually be put in place because the resources are there to allow it to happen? Minister, you have been involved in the court process; you know that this is really important. So we need to know that this provision is not a theoretical provision that says “Wouldn’t it be nice for victims to be able to participate in restorative justice, but, very sad but never mind, there are no resources to allow that to happen.”, because that is clearly the warning that the regulatory impact statement gives this Committee. Again, it is a vital question.

I will keep talking for a bit longer just so the Minister can get the answer from officials. I appreciate that he wants to answer this, as well as the questions—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: He’ll probably know it.

Oh, he might know it off the top of his head. Judith Collins would know, but then Judith Collins is not available, apparently, to answer the questions, and we know the reason for that.

I listened carefully to the Minister’s partial answer to my question on an earlier clause in an earlier part of this bill, and he talked about the offender levy being there to help out, but all of us know that that offender levy is pretty limited. All of us know that the warning given by officials was “Hey, we can’t do these things unless we reprioritise.”—that is, take it from other areas. Again, I would like the Minister to address this question of resourcing. Are the rights that we are promising victims sincerely—all of us in this Committee—going to simply lead to disappointed expectations because the resources are not there to allow restorative justice to happen? Perhaps the Minister could indicate in how many cases—[Bell rung] Oh, well, I will let the Minister answer now, and if he does not answer it fully, I can come back and ask him again.

It is encouraging to have this level of debate. I am sorry I did not get quickly enough off my butt to answer while we were discussing the previous part. The two questions were about the consistency between the bill currently before the Law and Order Committee, the Parole Amendment Bill, and this bill, the Victims of Crime Reform Bill. I can assure the member Phil Goff that there is no conflict between those two, and we will not be running back like we did under all Governments—let us be honest here—and doing little tart-ups later on down the track. So consistency is there.

The next question that the member asked was about why victims did not avail themselves of the opportunity to appear before parole hearings. He touched on one reason, which was that frequently the victim just wanted to put things behind them and did not want to re-engage. The other part of it, though, is that a lot of the way that people reflect on the criminal justice system is from a position of ignorance. It is not their fault. I do not mean any malice by saying that. It is just that people watch a lot of TV and they expect that what they see before them in the little square box is similar to the reality of dealing with our criminal justice system, and that just is not the case. To try to get around that, with the implementation of the code that we have been talking about over the course of this evening, all victims will be made aware and completely aware of what it will entail—for instance, the ability to be able to take part in a parole hearing without having to be confronted by, or sit in the same room as, the defendant. The fact that they can do that remotely, or that their evidence can be taken at a time that is much more convenient to them and put before the members of the parole board, I think is a very, very important thing.

I must say that people whom I know who have appeared in front of a parole hearing and made submissions have actually found an incredible gathering of strength from that process. I can recall that one of my constituents came to me wanting my assistance when an offender, who had tried to murder her, was coming up for parole. Unfortunately, although I was a member of Parliament, I was also the investigating officer in charge of preparing that file for court, so I was prevented from being able to go along and make submissions or make any representation.

💬 Hon Maryan Street: Do you spot a conflict of interest?

Yes, we spied a conflict. What we managed to do then was draft a complete submission towards the Parole Board, and one of the things that she asked for was the ability to be able to have a restorative justice conference with both offenders who had tried to kill her. What she found from that process was an incredible strengthening of her resolve and of her ability to be sure that she did not need to maintain any fear of these people, and just the ability to be able to have her say. So I would encourage all victims to reflect on what they might gain from appearing before a Parole Board or any restorative justice process.

The next question that the member asked was about resourcing, and all I can really say there is that it is more good news. In our last Budget, the Government doubled the amount of money available for restorative justice conferences, made a priority of pre-sentence restorative justice conferencing, and got contracts to make sure that every court in the country was covered by it, so any victim of a crime right around New Zealand would now have the ability to access restorative justice conferencing without any cost to themselves. Also what we are extending, which we have not really done so much in the past, is restorative justice availability in prisons—so pre-release. Although that has been available on the request of the offender, we are in a bit of a bind here because you cannot drag the offender into a restorative justice conference and make him—usually him—sit there. In fact, there has to be an agreement from both parties to be able to do that. So the offender may well request a restorative justice conference, but the victim might not want it, so it does not take place, and vice versa. The victim may well want to have a restorative justice conference, but the offender may not want that to take place.

There are some places within prisons where it has occurred through the provision of the Sycamore Tree project, which made restorative justice available to people in prisons on a purely voluntary basis, and provided by prison fellowship. Here, if the victim of the offender was not prepared to take part in the restorative justice conference, then a victim of a similar crime—a surrogate, in effect—who was happy to appear before the conference would explain to the offender the similarities of the crime, the way that he or she felt having been abused, etc., etc. There has been some good that has come from that, albeit it is not the actual victim, and obviously there are times when it cannot be the actual victim.

So, yes, I can assure the Hon Phil Goff that there is consistency between the two bills, as he sought. I have explained why some victims do not want to appear before Parole Boards but encourage them to do so because it may well be to their benefit. I can assure him that there is sufficient resourcing for the extension of restorative justice conferencing, which is now available for the first time throughout New Zealand in every court.

I would just like to put on record, as I have on a previous piece of legislation, my thanks to the Associate Minister of Justice, the Hon Chester Borrows, for actually taking seriously his responsibilities in the chair. That is a refreshing change from most other Ministers, and certainly the Minister of Justice. I think his credentials for becoming Minister of Justice—a position for which there will soon be a vacancy—are getting better all the time. But I say very sincerely thank you for that.

There is just one thing arising out of that that I need a little bit of clarification on. I am aware that there is another, I think, $2.3 million that has gone into restorative justice. Nevertheless, the regulatory impact statement on the Victims of Crime Reform Bill still talked about the service provision being limited. Maybe that is because that regulatory impact statement is so old—because this bill has been around for so long and it does not take into account the money that went through in the last Budget—but the impression that I have got from talking to people who work in the justice system is that, nevertheless, it still helps, it is good, but it is not sufficient. Again, the thing that I guess I am asking the Minister—I require a very brief answer from him—is whether the assurance he is giving the Committee is that, with the extension of this, any victim in any part of the country has a good prospect of being able to have a restorative justice session if that victim chooses it. Although there is extra money there, it seems to me that there is still a shortfall in the funding that is necessary for this system to work better. If the results are as the Minister has said—you know, 37 percent better outcomes—then surely we would want this to be a universal service. I just need to get clarification about that one small point. Yes, there is more money, but is there still a significant shortfall that means that many people seeking a restorative justice process may be declined for it?

Yes, I can assure the member that the regulatory impact statement was written well before the changes in the last Budget, when the budget was increased. Restorative justice conferencing is now universally available across the country. It is expected that there will be an uptake in restorative justice conferencing as a result of the passing of the Victims of Crime Reform Bill. From a briefing I had only a matter of a couple of hours ago, there has been a huge decline in restorative justice conferencing, mainly because there has been a huge decline in crime and a huge decline in people appearing before the court. There are fewer people seeking restorative justice conferences and so there is a pool of money there available at the moment that is not being accessed and will be available.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 424 in the name of the Hon Judith Collins to Part 4 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 4 as amended agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 424 in the name of the Hon Judith Collins to clause 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

The Committee divided the bill into the Victims’ Rights Amendment Bill, the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 4), the Parole Amendment Bill (No 2), and the Sentencing Amendment Bill (No 2), pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 425.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.