Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill

I move, That the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Law and Order Committee to consider the bill. The bill implements the Government’s intention to introduce drug and alcohol testing where drug and alcohol abstinence is a condition of bail, home detention, or other community-based sentences and orders.

We all know that the misuse of alcohol and drugs is a major driver of crime. Half of the offender population say they are under the influence of drugs or alcohol when they offend, and 60 percent of community offenders have an identified alcohol or drug dependency. This is something our Government takes extremely seriously. We are committed to achieving the Better Public Services goal of reducing reoffending by 25 percent by 2017. The Department of Corrections has expanded the number of alcohol and drug interventions that it offers—for example, in 2014 there were more than 8,500 drug and alcohol treatments and interventions, which is an increase of nearly 300 percent on the previous year. This complements the police’s Prevention First strategy, which has led to record low crime rates. But programmes on their own are certainly not enough. Prevention strategies need effective tools to create the permanent lifestyle changes that offenders need to stop using alcohol and drugs. They must be deterred from using these triggers that lead to reoffending when they are in the community.

Each year around 4,000 offenders on community sentences and orders and around 15,000 people on bail have abstinence as a condition of their release. These conditions can be imposed, of course, by the court or the Parole Board. The imposition of these conditions reflects the fact that alcohol or drug use contributes to the individual’s increased risk of further offending. It is important that the agency administering the sentence or order knows when the condition has been breached. Compliance with these conditions improves public safety and security.

Current legislation does not provide a clear authority to test offenders or those on bail for the presence of alcohol or drugs in their systems. The bill addresses this problem by amending the Bail Act 2000, the Sentencing Act 2002, and the Parole Act 2002. By doing so, it creates an explicit legislative mandate for alcohol and drug testing of offenders subject to abstinence conditions. It recognises that such testing is necessary for the proper enforcement of abstinence conditions and that these new technologies provide greater opportunities to improve public safety. The amendments in the bill will require all bailees and community-based offenders subject to abstinence conditions to undergo testing or to submit to continuous monitoring if directed by the police or the Department of Corrections. The ability to test will in practice be confined to those at the highest risk of breaching their abstinence conditions. The high likelihood of detection and the possibility of imprisonment will make these individuals think twice about using alcohol or drugs. On that basis, I expect this bill to reduce reoffending by these offenders.

So how does the bill work? The bill allows rules about testing methods and procedures to be made by the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections and the Commissioner of Police. These rules will be guided by the principles set out in the bill: testing should be no more intrusive than is reasonably necessary, testing should take place no more often than is reasonably necessary, and, finally, those being tested should be afforded as much privacy and dignity as possible. With so many offenders being under the influence of drugs or alcohol when they offend, quick action is critical. This bill will ensure that the Department of Corrections and the police can respond to breaches rapidly and prevent serious reoffending before it occurs.

Under this Government we have already seen the benefits of GPS technology in ensuring that offenders abide by their conditions. This new technology ensures that when offenders stray into the prohibited areas or remove their ankle bracelets, law enforcement is alerted immediately, and this enables enforcement agencies to respond quickly. I look forward to the expansion of drug and alcohol monitoring technologies to also help the police and corrections officers identify breaches speedily. The bill is another critical step towards achieving the Government’s goal of a 15 percent reduction in crime and a 25 percent reduction in reoffending by 2017.

In summary, I am confident that the measures in this bill will significantly help the Department of Corrections and the police enforce drug and alcohol abstinence conditions. I am confident that this bill will deter offenders and those on bail from breaching their conditions. Most important, I am confident that it will protect New Zealanders from the negative consequences of drug and alcohol misuse. That is why I highly commend this bill to the House.

Before I put the question to the House, I do want to reiterate a warning that was given by the Speaker at the general debate yesterday with regard to the reading of speeches. Although there is some flexibility, especially for Ministers on the first reading when they are making technical remarks, that was not the case in this particular speech. Although it was appropriate to refer to notes for figures—and there were a number of figures, especially in the early part—I want to caution members about reading speeches.

The Labour Party supports the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill. It goes without saying that the use and the abuse of alcohol in our communities is fairly rampant, and also the use and abuse of drugs such as cannabis are pretty rampant in many communities, as is now, sadly, the use and abuse of harder drugs such as methamphetamine, otherwise known as P. I have spoken in this House before of a family of students at the school where I used to be principal who had an intimate knowledge of the production and the consumption of P. That was because for their parents and their parents’ associates it was just a regular part of their week to imbibe that drug. Also I remember a youth aid officer telling me that in one house that he raided—and this was the house of a student who attended the school I was principal of—in 14 places around the lounge where you and I might have had chips or nuts on the arm of the chair or on the coffee table, they had marijuana. It was just there, accessible, with kids all around. That is, again, unacceptable. Then there was the infamous league competition up north where the player of the day, instead of receiving his $20 meat pack from the local butcher, received, in fact, an ounce of marijuana.

This just emphasises and highlights how normalised drugs and alcohol are in many communities and how normalised drugs and alcohol are in many families. Let us imagine, then, how difficult it is for an offender who is on a community-based sentence, if the use of drugs and alcohol is normalised in his or her life, to voluntarily abstain from partaking of drugs and alcohol. That is why we need a system that has to impose abstinence on these people. I remember a kaumātua up north saying to me that sometimes the only way to get people to do the right thing or to change is to seriously inconvenience them. This bill will seriously inconvenience offenders in that if the conditions of their community-based sentence say that they must abstain from drugs and alcohol, they will be made to undergo testing and they will be made to provide bodily samples to see whether there is alcohol or drugs in their systems. So it will be an inconvenience for them, but sometimes that is the price that we do have to pay to make sure that we live in a safe society.

There are safeguards within the bill that the Law and Order Committee will examine to make sure, as the Minister of Corrections has said, that people’s rights are not going to be overly imposed upon. We have got to make sure that this does, in fact, comply with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The bill itself does give us the proper authority to undergo this testing regime. So what does the bill do? The Minister has spelt out what the bill does. It allows the police and the Department of Corrections to require community-based offenders to undergo a drug and alcohol testing regime to monitor them for drugs and alcohol in their systems. The offender must be advised by a judicial officer or the registrar up front that they will be made to undergo the monitoring by an authorised person, and, if they are advised, then they must do so.

There are a number of areas, as I have said, that the select committee needs to scrutinise and examine. Some of these things are the types of testing procedures that the offenders will have to undergo, the regularity of the testing, the consequences of prohibiting an authorised person from coming to conduct the tests, and the types of drug and alcohol testing devices—and I think it is really important that we examine that. There is a range of drug and alcohol monitoring and testing devices. I believe other jurisdictions around the world have already implemented systems like this, and it would be really good to hear at the select committee stage what those monitoring devices are, how they actually work, the technical functions around those devices, how often and how long continuous testing may be carried out for, and minimum levels of controlled drugs and alcohol in the system as well.

There is no argument that drugs and alcohol are a major driver of crime in the country. In fact, a District Court judge from up north said to me that if we could miraculously eliminate alcohol from up north, 90 percent of his business would disappear overnight. That is quite a telling sort of comment from a District Court judge who every day has to deal with incidents where crimes have been committed because of drug and alcohol abuse. As the Minister has rightly pointed out, 48 percent—almost half—of offenders report at the time that they are arrested that they have been using at least one drug. The Minister said two-thirds—60 percent—of offenders on home detention or supervision have a drug or alcohol addiction issue. So that just illustrates the seriousness, and just how rampant drug and alcohol issues are and their contribution to crime. As the Minister said, 5,000 community-based—he said 4,000; I have read 5,000—community-based offenders and 15,000 bailees have some abstinence conditions imposed upon them as part of their sentence. Drug and alcohol testing is used overseas and evidence shows that it is effective. So, as I have said, I would be interested to hear just what makes it so effective and what we can do to improve on that. What were some of the ups and downs that those overseas jurisdictions experienced as they were implementing similar systems?

There are three principles that need to be applied consistently; again, the Minister has gone over them. The first is that testing is no more intrusive than is reasonably necessary. The second is that testing takes place no more often than is necessary. And the third, of course, is that we make sure that testing and monitoring do maintain a person’s dignity and right to privacy. A positive test for drugs and alcohol can be used as evidence of non-compliance with the drug and alcohol conditions imposed on an offender or bailee, and they—the offender or the bailee—need to understand that this can be used against them. There are offences for non-compliance, such as refusing an authorised person access to the home to conduct the testing, tampering with the devices, or diluting or manipulating any samples.

I just want to go back, briefly, to the technology around the testing—the testing devices and their accuracy, which is something I would like to explore. Again, when I was a schoolteacher we had a policeman come to the school to talk to kids about his police equipment. The kids got to sit in the car and turn on the sirens and the lights and everything. The policeman brought out a roadside breath-testing kit, and he lined up half a dozen kids, got them to speak their names into the device, and they, of course, came up with negative results. Then he got them to gargle Listerine, spit it out, and then say their names and addresses, and it came up with positive results because the device is able to pick up the alcohol in the Listerine. He also said that perfume and cologne, if alcohol-based, can also be picked up for their alcohol content. Therefore, any device that is attached and picks up the alcohol content in sweat may actually also pick up the alcohol in cologne and perfume. Those are just some of the issues that we need to examine as a select committee. As I have said, the Labour Party supports the bill.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. First of all, I would like to congratulate the Minister, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, on introducing this bill. Drugs and alcohol are a very important part of our lives. Studies done on this show that one of the biggest reasons behind crime is drugs and alcohol. The irony is that we are going through a petition in the Law and Order Committee where the petitioner has requested that we legalise cannabis. This Government is really focused on reducing the use of alcohol and drugs and there are some people who want other drugs to be legalised, which I do not think this National Government will support in any manner.

This bill is a very important tool that we are going to provide to corrections officers and the police that will help to monitor offenders on whether their bail conditions are being breached or not. It is very important that we have the tools. In the past 6 or 7 years this Government has really focused on providing tools to the police and to the judiciary so that we can reduce crime in this country. Crime is one thing that makes people feel unsafe. As I said in one of the speeches yesterday on the Parole Amendment Bill, people are now feeling safe in their homes, they are feeling safe on the streets, and they are feeling safe in their businesses. That is what people want from a Government, and this Government in the past 6 or 7 years has provided tools to the judiciary and to the police so that we can reduce crime. Crime is the lowest since 1978, which means a lot to the people. It has given a lot of confidence and people are feeling happy about it.

I have got little doubt that the National Government has always endeavoured to make communities stronger and safer by focusing its investment on the sectors like rehabilitation, education, and improving the profile of prisoners. Right now we have got three prisons that are called working prisons, where the prisoners are being trained in different sectors so that they can have some kind of trade training before they go back into the community. Once they are back in the community, they have got confidence that they can work, they can integrate into the community, and people can be safe and be protected from their past. People have to think about this thing—the past, which they have to forget—and look forward to the future. It is great to see more and more people who earlier may not have had clarity on their pathway through their life leaving prison and being able now to think about their future, about their families, and about their children.

I do not think that any offender would like to go back to jail or to prison, or reoffend, and that is the reason reoffending is also coming down with time. As the Minister mentioned in his speech, the Department of Corrections is working very hard to make sure that the reoffending rate is coming down. The Prime Minister has set targets for Better Public Services, and we have set a target for reoffending to be reduced by 25 percent by 2017. When we were having a financial review yesterday at the Law and Order Committee, the Department of Corrections was very confident that it will be working towards this target so that we can achieve it in days to come.

The investment in the future of prisoners is an investment for New Zealand’s future. We want to ensure that people who are working are feeling safe, and this bill—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am now going to invite the member in the second half of his speech—he was really good for about 2 minutes—to now address the bill, not post-release, which is nothing to do with the bill.

This bill will give rights to the police and the Department of Corrections to try to ensure that offenders and bailees comply with their drug and alcohol conditions. They can test them, but this bill does not provide that they should breach their privacy. Police and corrections officers should make sure that privacy is maintained and that it is not quite often that they go and test offenders. They have to ensure that what they are doing is not breaching any privacy and that the offender is not being harassed because of this. Current legislation does not give any clarity or any authority to police or corrections officers to do these kinds of tests, but this bill will help in putting up a legislative basis for the testing and the monitoring of the bailees and the community-based offenders with drug and alcohol conditions.

It requires all the bailees and the community-based offenders who are subject to the drug and alcohol abstention conditions imposed by the court or Parole Board to undergo alcohol and drug testing and to submit to continuous monitoring if directed by the police or the Department of Corrections. The Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections and the Commissioner of Police will have this authority to have the testing methods and procedures set up for offenders. This is another tool that we are going to provide to the judiciary. It will help to reduce crime and reoffending further, and I hope that it will go a long way towards the security of people. I commend this bill to the House.

The purpose of this bill is to ensure that those who are out in our community either on parole or on bail and who are subject to conditions of non-use of alcohol and drugs, imposed either by the court in the case of bailees or by the Parole Board in relation to those on parole, actually comply with those conditions. Most New Zealanders would be surprised to know that legislation of this nature is actually required for that to happen. All of us would have assumed that if there is a court-imposed condition or a Parole Board - imposed condition that you do not use drugs and alcohol when you are in the community at the discretion of that authority, then there would be proper checks on compliance with those conditions. What we read in this bill and in the regulatory impact statement is that the authorities are telling us, very belatedly, that there is no legislative mandate to ensure compliance with court or Parole Board - imposed conditions. I find that quite amazing.

You imagine that when a condition is imposed, there is a way of monitoring compliance, and that in cases where there is the highest risk, there is some testing to ensure that compliance is taking place. The fact that we now learn that that is not the case I think indicates that the authorities have been rather lax in reporting back to this House that something that all of us would assume was necessary was not actually in place. I have to ask the question. If the court or the Parole Board has the power to require testing of compliance with the conditions—and the court can, apparently, order that—why has the court not been doing it? We read from this bill that the court has not been.

This is a concern because there are some 20,000 people out in our community at any one time who are subject to conditions of non-drug or non-alcohol use—5,000 on community sentences and 15,000 on bail—yet the police say that they very rarely test people on bail to see whether they are actually complying with the non-use of drugs or alcohol. By comparison, in countries that we would normally relate to in terms of our justice system, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, testing is commonplace. So, somewhat belatedly, this bill comes to the House.

I am curious that 3 years ago, measures were moved to require beneficiaries to be tested for drug or alcohol use, and yet there was no comparable provision for people who have been proven to have committed crimes and been sentenced for them or for people who are on bail for allegedly committing a crime. There was no such provision for these people. Somehow, beneficiaries came under the big stick before those who were either convicted criminals or alleged to be criminals. I am surprised, therefore, that we got this the wrong way about, and that this legislation had not come in earlier, but it is here and it is good that it is here. I believe that it makes sense. Labour will be supporting it, but we will be asking questions in the select committee to ensure that this is the best and the most cost-effective way of ensuring the safety of the community.

There are two fundamental reasons why we need this legislation. The first one is public safety. If a person is subject to conditions they are not meeting and they have a track record of offending while being influenced by drugs or alcohol, they constitute a threat to the community, and we need to deal with that situation immediately. So there is a need to have legislation of this sort.

What the bill also does is that it sets out the methods and procedures for monitoring and testing. Well, actually, it does not spell out those in detail, but rather it sets the principles that will govern the rules and procedures that will be set by the chief executive officer of the Department of Corrections and the Commissioner of Police. This House is rightly careful about delegating authority to subordinate legislation—to regulations—about what is done and how it is done, but in this case I am glad that at least the principles are set down by which the police commissioner or the head of the department will set the rules. They are common-sense things: that the drug testing and monitoring be no more intrusive than necessary, that they be no more often than necessary, and that they give as much privacy to the person being tested as is reasonable given all of the circumstances of the case.

The bill also sets out the consequences of non-compliance because it is not just a case of testing and finding people who are breaking the rules; it is about making sure that those who are subject to the conditions believe that if they actually do not meet the conditions, there is a good chance they are going to be caught. That is the critical thing about this bill.

We have seen that in the United States. The United States, which has similar provisions to this, found that it could reduce drunk-driving by repeat offenders from around 36 percent down to nil if those most at risk of drunk-driving felt that there was a high likelihood that their breach of the conditions would be detected. I think that those statistics are persuasive.

Secondly, in Australia the experience has been pretty much that you do not do it to everybody. We are talking about 20,000 people who are subject to conditions. If we were to regularly monitor and test 20,000 people, the cost would be astronomical. We would be talking about tens of millions of dollars and a huge use of resources. So practicality suggests that what you do is test those at most risk of reoffending and those who, if they reoffend, are at most risk of committing a serious offence, such as a violent offence. From reading the regulatory impact statement, that appears to be the way in which the department and the police will go about implementing a testing regime, and I think that that is very appropriate.

Why do we need to do all of this? Well, what we know about drugs and alcohol is that they are both major drivers of crime. I think that during the time when I was working in the justice system, nearly half of all of those arrested reported that at the time of arrest they had been using drugs or alcohol—48 percent. If that is relying on them to report it, you can assume that it is not over-reported—it is more likely to be under-reported. So for nearly half of all of those arrested, their behaviour at the time they are arrested is influenced by the misuse of drugs or alcohol, or addiction to drugs or alcohol.

It is even greater when you come to looking at those who are on home detention, on extended supervision, or supervision orders. Of those who come into those categories, 68 percent are found to have behavioural problems caused by drug and alcohol abuse and addiction—68 percent. So whatever we can do in this area is really important. We will end up testing somewhat fewer than 500 out of the 20,000 people who have conditions imposed on them, but if we target the people who are most at risk, then we are going to have the biggest impact in the most cost-effective way.

The cost is reported as being about $2 million to $3 million a year. That is a substantial amount of money and a substantial amount of work on the part of the department and the police, but if this is effective—and I believe that it should be effective—then I believe that that is a good investment of the taxpayer dollar.

What we are trying to do here, to sum up, is to ensure compliance. There is no good purpose in imposing conditions about non-use of alcohol and drugs unless you have a means of checking to see that those conditions are being followed. If there is a breach of those conditions, then there will be some sanctions. The sanctions will involve either fines or imprisonment, and they will probably increase the need for prison capacity by a modest amount—by about 10 beds a year. So I believe that this legislation does have the potential to improve public safety, and the Labour Party will be supporting it on that basis.

It is an honour to rise to make a contribution to the first reading of the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill. It is pleasing to hear that the Labour Party will be supporting this bill, and I want to acknowledge Phil Goff, the former Minister of Corrections on the other side of the House. I would be interested to see how the Green Party votes on this one, though, given that, from what we have heard of it in the past, there are two pieces here that go against the grain—that is, being tougher on criminals and being tougher on the consumption and use of wacky backy. So it will be interesting to see how those members vote.

I just want to touch on the purpose of this bill. It amends the Bail Act 2000, the Sentencing Act 2002, and the Parole Act 2002 to enable the Department of Corrections and police to require community-based offenders and bailees who are subject to conditions prohibiting the use of drugs and alcohol to undergo drug and alcohol testing. I agree with the statement made by Phil Goff. I think it would probably be consistent with the assumption of most New Zealanders that this had taken place already. So it is a really pleasing move, and I congratulate Minister Lotu-Iiga on bringing this bill to the House. It is very important.

I think that at a fundamental level, when offenders are back in our communities, we want to support them in order to be sure they stay away from the drivers of crime and to keep our communities safe as well. Everybody who has spoken on this bill this evening so far has acknowledged the incredible contribution that drugs and alcohol make in terms of encouraging first-time offenders and also recidivism. Anything that we can do to stymie and prevent excessive consumption of alcohol and consumption of drugs will be very important in achieving the overall desire, which is reducing the level of crime and reoffending. Just as a bit of background, at the moment police and Department of Corrections staff are trying to ensure offenders and bailees comply with drug and alcohol conditions, but they are limited in what they can actually do. The current legislation does not give clear authority for them to test offenders or bailees for the presence of alcohol and/or drugs, and so, therefore, this bill creates the opportunity and legislative mandate for alcohol and drug testing for eligible offenders and bailees.

Yesterday, in the Law and Order Committee, we had the Department of Corrections come in for its annual review. It outlined a number of initiatives that are taking place in order to reduce reoffending and increase rehabilitation. The first sort of touches on and brings together the Government’s increased investment in three key areas: the first is rehabilitation, including rehabilitation from drug and alcohol issues; the second is education; and the third is work experience. I just want to briefly touch on each of those three areas because I think they relate to the purpose of this bill quite closely.

In terms of rehabilitation, we know that in the 2013-14 financial year there were 2,525 alcohol and drug treatments that took place by the Department of Corrections. In the same year there were 5,262 interventions for prisoners. That is an increase of 102 percent of alcohol and drug treatments compared with the year before that, and an increase of 310 percent of interventions compared with the year before that. We can see that the increased investment and the increased focus that the Department of Corrections staff are putting on rehabilitation for drug and alcohol treatment is having an effect behind the cell doors. What this bill does is it extends that one step further to ensure that it is also having an effect when these people are out in the communities, either on bail or on parole. I think that the risk for reoffending to take place and for criminals to slip back into the drug and alcohol habits that they had while they were in prison and before they came in in the first place is incredibly heightened when they leave prison. That is why this bill is critically important in the wider picture in terms of the Department of Correction’s strategy around rehabilitation.

The second key area is around education. I will just briefly explain how I think that relates to the drug and alcohol provisions that are in this bill. When staff from the Department of Corrections were at our select committee meeting yesterday they talked about the increased investment and focus they are putting on education. They are saying that every prisoner has now received an individual learning assessment and is receiving an individual education plan. I initially assumed that that would be for vocational training and enabling them to get into a job and into the workplace, but, actually, it goes right back to National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 1. A lot of these people do not even have the basic qualifications that you receive when you are 15 or 16 years old at high school. If you do not even have NCEA level 1, 2, or 3, you are not going to have any chance of having any vocational training whatsoever, which reduces your chances of being able to be employable, and I suspect that that was probably one of the major factors leading into these people entering the corrections system in the first place.

I think that how that relates to this bill in terms of drug and alcohol treatment is that if you are constantly seeking employment or seeking work opportunities, you are constantly being let down and you are not being taken on board due to your education and qualifications. Then, as a depressant, it probably drives you towards alcohol and drug consumption because you do not know where else to go. You feel your self-esteem is very low and you are not being given opportunities to earn an income, so you are, therefore, having to rely on other avenues to earn a living and provide for yourself and your family, which probably gets people on the train of drug and alcohol consumption in the first place. So the focus that the Department of Corrections is putting on the training and education space, in addition to the rehabilitation of drug and alcohol treatment, I think goes hand in hand. The third is work experience, which has the same relationship to drug and alcohol as education does.

I think the investment into, and emphasis on, what goes on behind the cell in terms of drug and alcohol rehabilitation that the Department of Corrections is making and the emphasis that it is now extending through the provisions in this bill—it is going to be putting this on past the cell gates as well—goes towards the wide social policy approach that the Government is taking. I think that although it relates incredibly to this bill, it also relates to a number of other bills that the Law and Order Committee has been considering—and is considering in my very limited time on the committee; 2 weeks, as of yesterday—but it is, none the less, very important. I think that tying all of these things together and the work that is being done in police, the corrections system, social welfare, education, and justice more broadly are very important in contributing towards the overall strategy around reducing offending, reducing reoffending, and trying to prevent as many people as possible from entering into the justice pipeline.

Going back to the provisions in this bill, Mr Goff focused on the principles that the bill outlines, which then gives some guidance to the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections and the Commissioner of Police to go ahead and set some more precise guidelines around that. The following principles have been put in place to adhere to the human rights safeguards that need to be in place in such a bill—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! That section has already been read out four times, and I think that is tedious repetition.

It is a great pleasure to take a call on this bill on behalf, really, of my colleague David Clendon, who has followed the issues that the bill canvasses with considerable interest. I wanted to begin by referring to what has happened in Auckland over the last year or so, and that is a trial of a new specialist kind of court, the alcohol and other drug treatment court. The principle behind those courts is to take offenders who meet certain criteria—they are repeat criminal offenders whose offending is fuelled by alcohol and other drug consumption who otherwise would be on their way into a custodial sentence—and it says in respect of those offenders: “Let’s divert them away from that custodial path and instead let’s try something else. Let’s try actually treating the alcohol or other drug use that is actually fuelling their criminal behaviour.” What the court does is it imposes on them a strict regime of irregular—rather than regular—frequent testing and compulsory alcohol or other drug treatment programmes. It involves frequent reappearances in court in front of the same judge and in front of the same team who were present at their first appearance to monitor progress.

I spent a day in Judge Emma Aitkin’s court in Auckland following the process that was employed by the court. It was an extraordinarily rewarding day. I have spent a lot of time over the years in courts and it is usually a pretty depressing process, but in this particular court I saw in the morning a panel convened by the judge that involved the prosecution, defence lawyers, social workers, and treatment providers all getting together discussing the cases that they were going to be considering in the afternoon and thinking: “What progress has this person making? What is the best thing that we could do for this person when they appear this afternoon?”. I was hugely impressed by the genuine goodwill and concern shown by all of those parties. Then in the afternoon I was able to see the offenders who had been discussed in the morning appearing in court and I saw the plans that had been worked out in the morning actually being implemented. I have to say after years of administering alcohol and other drug treatment services for district health boards and other health service providers that I saw a really rewarding process with the people appearing before this court actually making progress and changing their lives, which was fantastic.

I was particularly encouraged because it is a new way of dealing with criminal offending, whereas the old way, which is traditional punishment, is clearly not working—clearly not working. Prison and other forms of punishment simply do not address the irrational behaviour that emerges from the consumption of alcohol and other drugs. These are irrational processes that are not possible to change through punishment mechanisms that intend to impact on offending.

That is why this bill is so important, because it provides a springboard to allow us to do something a little bit different in community-based sentencing and in bail. That is one of the reasons why the Green Party is supporting this bill today. We are supporting it at least as far as the select committee because, although currently some treatment is available in prisons and in other corrections system settings, the simple fact is that most of the offenders who need that treatment are not getting it. Yet, as we have already heard from Kelvin Davis in this debate, much—perhaps most—of the criminal offending that comes before the courts is actually fuelled by alcohol and other drug consumption. So we have a fundamental disconnect between what is causing offending, what might change that offending, and how we respond to it.

So typically, the corrections system aims to do several things. It aims to provide a disincentive for other offending, it aims to take a person who has committed offences out of circulation so that they cannot reoffend during that time, and it sets out to provide—I hesitate to use the word—a kind of revenge or retribution for the offending. It does not set out to change the fundamental drivers, and that is where this bill comes in.

I want to quote from Roger Brooking, who is one of our most experienced drug and alcohol counsellors involved in the corrections system. He wrote a book called Flying Blind: How the justice system perpetuates crime and the Corrections Department fails to correct. What he says is that by failing to place offenders into substance abuse treatment in particular, the justice system actually contributes to criminal reoffending and to New Zealand’s high rate of recidivism. The biggest obstacle in the system is that although 80 percent of offending occurs under the influence of alcohol and drugs, only about 5 percent of all offenders are required by judges to attend a treatment programme as part of their sentence.

The Green Party supports this bill for these reasons. It provides the opportunity for us to connect offenders with alcohol and drug treatment programmes, which is a connection that is simply not occurring at the moment, and also for the absolutely obvious reason that if we have got 200 or 250 people—I guess estimates would vary—who have been required to be abstinent by judges when they have appeared before the court and who would pose a serious risk to New Zealanders if they are not abstinent but there is no mechanism for monitoring their abstinence, then that is a fundamental problem. It places the public at risk and it means that those offenders themselves are actually at risk of further offending.

So we would say that intensive, targeted testing is going to be the most effective at improving public safety because it focuses the testing on those who pose the highest risk of breaching an abstinence condition and causing the greatest harm if they do so. The House has already heard that research from the United States, in fact, has shown that a higher likelihood of detection is a significant factor in avoiding further offending. We do want to see the testing that this bill provides for linked up with treatment programmes. We believe that that is in the best interests of achieving a health approach to offending, rather than having a purely punitive criminal justice approach.

We agree with the other concerns expressed by Phil Goff around some of those other issues, and that is why at this point we support the bill, but only to a select committee, because this regime could be used—could be used—as a means of harassment. So that is why we say that at the select committee we will be looking for the processes for determining who will do the testing and the processes for how testers will gain access into private homes. We will be looking for the mechanisms to ensure that there could be independent oversight and review of the testing processes that have been used. Those are the concerns that we are going to be looking out for, but we are very happy to support the bill’s referral to a select committee at this point. Thank you.

I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to this bill. This bill rightly amends three Acts of Parliament in an effort to improve public safety, reduce crime, and, hopefully, reduce reoffending. The abuse of alcohol and other drugs has been the bane of our lives. It is a major driver of violence, as other speakers have previously mentioned, and unfortunately, therefore, is one of the drivers in the breakdown of our society and the quintessential Kiwi lifestyle.

We have to change behaviour if we are to ever rebuild the lives of the offenders, their victims, their families, and our communities. This bill will change behaviour, we believe. It will change the behaviour of hopefully all of the nearly 50 percent of offenders who report that they were under the influence of either alcohol or at least one drug at the time of their arrest. It will also hopefully change the lives of approximately two-thirds of community-based offenders who have drug and alcohol-based addictions.

As the law currently stands, the courts and the Parole Board may impose conditions requiring the offender to abstain from consuming or possessing alcohol or drugs, but very rarely are offenders or bailees ever required to be tested for compliance. There is no legal authority to require offenders and those on bail to submit to testing, nor are there any consequences for lack of compliance. To New Zealand First it makes sense to change the situation. This bill, we believe, will change the situation. The current three Acts—the Bail Act 2000, the Sentencing Act 2002, and the Parole Act 2002—are good. They give provision for the courts and the Parole Board to place conditions on release or bail relating to the abstinence of alcohol and drugs. However, this bill gives these current pieces of legislation more grunt and more teeth to be able to bite at the offenders who are using and abusing alcohol while on bail or in the community.

Personally, having been a part of the corrections system in my previous employment, I have seen the success of the random drug-testing system within our prisons. I have seen personally the number of prisoners within the wire who used to use drugs go down drastically because of random drug-testing. That system works two ways. It imposes penalties for non-compliance and at the same time it has brought in some incentives at the time of their parole hearing if they do comply with the requirements consistently.

I must, at this juncture, congratulate the Department of Corrections on its success in changing people’s lives. Some of my colleagues have very unkindly mentioned that the Department of Corrections also deserves congratulations on getting rid of me to New Zealand First.

The bill makes sense because it will require all those on bail or serving community-based sentences who have conditions imposed on them such as abstention from alcohol and other drugs to be tested for compliance. If they are not compliant, there are consequences for stepping out of line. New Zealand First likes that.

New Zealand is faced with a group of offenders, bailees, and parolees whose offending is directly related to their use and abuse of alcohol and other drugs. If we are to ever protect our people and property, we need to seek a change in behaviour. Legislation drives a change in behaviour and so does having education and support services. New Zealand First hopes that this bill will mean that those offenders at the highest risk of reoffending because of their abuse and use of alcohol and other drugs will be forced to change their behaviour. The consequences they face if they are not compliant with the conditions placed on them once this bill has passed into law will encourage them to stop abusing alcohol and other drugs. We hope that not only are such conditions placed on them but they are also ordered to attend rehabilitation and support services so that they can learn how to manage their addictive tendencies. We presume that the testing will be random, and we support this because it defeats the purpose if the offender, bailee, or parolee—

I regret that I have to interrupt the member because the time has come for me to leave the Chair.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.