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

It is my pleasure to stand in support of the second reading of the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the members of the Law and Order Committee who participated in this process. I would also like to thank all the officials for their assistance during this process. This bill, which was introduced by the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, amends the Bail Act 2000, the Sentencing Act 2002, and the Parole Act 2002 to enable the Department of Corrections and the New Zealand Police to require community-based offenders and bailees who are subject to the condition of prohibiting the use of drug and alcohol to undergo drug and alcohol testing. It is very important.

This Government has been working so that reoffending can be reduced, and this is one of the measures that will help ensure that the people who have been released from prison are constantly monitored and they are not using drugs and alcohol. The Government has a target to reduce reoffending by 15 percent by 2017. We are working hard to reduce reoffending so that people can feel safe in their homes. When offenders are back in our communities, we want to support them to stay away from drugs—which are the main reason for crime, as has been found in many studies—and we want to make sure that the communities are safe. The bill supports the targets that are set by the Government to reduce the reoffending.

The Law and Order Committee made some changes in this process. The first one was to provide that psychoactive substances can be tested from time to time. The offenders who have been released from prison or released on bail should be able to be tested for psychoactive substances because they are becoming one of the major problems, as drugs and alcohol have already been. This change will reduce the driver of the crime. We also recommended that if someone does not allow these conditions to be tested at their premises, they can be prosecuted under the condition of breach of bail, which is more consistent with the existing approach of the bill.

It is important that we want to make sure that a community feels safe when these people are released in the community, and with these words I commend this bill to the House.

The Labour Party is supporting this legislation because we agree it is sensible where people are serving community-based sentences, be they on bail or parole, that the authorities can monitor conditions that are imposed upon them relating to drug and alcohol use. That said, I have to take issue with something that the prior speaker, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, just said. He said that the Government has an objective of reducing reoffending rates. I want to highlight what is happening in respect of the—at the moment—contentious issue around serious sexual crimes. Do you know how it is cutting reoffending rates? It is actually not prosecuting and convicting those people in the first place.

You might think that that is a throw-away remark; it is actually grounded in fact. We have an increasing number of serious sexual crimes being committed. We know that from the statistics. We also know that we have fewer convictions for those crimes in total, so, despite a higher number of total offences, there are fewer convictions, and the clearance rate of those crimes is lower, as well as the conviction rate. So there is more crime in this area, fewer convictions, and fewer clearances. That is not a record that the Government should be proud of.

I want to turn to another issue. We agree, I think, on all sides of the House here—I think there is very wide agreement—that this is a good piece of legislation, giving the authorities further powers to monitor people, including those on parole. People who serve a sentence for the most serious of crimes—murder—are sentenced to life imprisonment. They are generally then released after a period—depending on sentence, but it is generally around 14 years—and then for ever, whenever they are released from prison, they are on parole for life because they are sentenced to life imprisonment but they are, after a period, released on parole. So those people, the most serious of criminals, are on parole for the rest of their lives. The parole conditions can include monitoring for alcohol and drug abuse so as to minimise the risk to society that they will reoffend.

Just yesterday in this House we were having a discussion as to why it would be prudent to send to a select committee the legislation relating to returning prisoners from Australia. The Labour Party had suggested a way in which we could guard against problems in that bill that had not been thought of in the truncated process that was whacked through under urgency. Because of negligence by the Government, the bill had not been introduced until yesterday and had to pass through all stages before those flights landed, with large numbers of serious criminals coming from Australia. We knew that it had to be done under urgency, but we also knew that doing it under urgency meant that some of the flaws in that legislation would not be picked up. So we said that that bill should be passed through all stages in one version with a termination date of a year, and a second version of that bill should go to a select committee immediately so as to take effect on the expiration of the other bill in a year and we would sort out the problems in the meantime. This is an example of a serious problem.

You know, we have heard from the Government how important this bill is so that we can monitor people on parole. Well, what happens to those people who are coming back from Australia with murder convictions? Does this bill apply to them? Can I have an answer to that from the Government? No, I cannot because the answer is, no, it does not. That problem could have been fixed in the next few months by the parallel process that I have been talking about for fixing this aspect of the legislation that applies to returning offenders from Australia.

At the select committee any one of us could have listened to this debate—this thought had not occurred to me until I actually prepared for this debate today. I did not think of this yesterday when we were considering the returning offenders legislation. We would have had submissions from the Law Society, from Rape Crisis, from the people who represent the interests of victims of crime, from rehabilitation people like People at Risk Solutions, or the Howard League for Penal Reform—someone would have picked it up, even if no MP did. They would have said that we need to make sure, in respect of these people who would have had parole conditions in Australia and are now returning to New Zealand unsupervised, that the New Zealand authorities have the ability to appropriately supervise them and protect the New Zealand public by having similar parole conditions imposed in New Zealand, including in respect of drug and alcohol abuse and the monitoring thereof. They would have picked up that it is absolutely obvious that this legislation should be applying to those people too.

I think this is yet another illustration of—I have got to say it—the belligerent, myopic stubbornness of Amy Adams on this occasion. What I was proposing through the Labour Party would not only have got the balance right in respect of protecting the civil liberties of New Zealanders and making sure that we are not going too far in the legislation; but, as I said in those debates, it would have ensured that also we were properly protecting the New Zealand public. As a consequence, the day before the Government stands up and heralds this legislation as better protecting the New Zealand public, we have not picked it up—we have not picked it up. We have not heard from the Government that we have got this gap now in the New Zealand legislation that means that the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill, which applies to, amongst others, people who are on parole, will not be applying to the people who are coming back from Australia.

Having alerted the Government to the issue, I hope that the Government, or its officials, actually listens to this debate and has the good grace to come down here in the Committee stage and actually amend this legislation before it goes through to make sure that it applies to those returning offenders. But it does show how important it is to New Zealanders that you have a decent Opposition that is actually pointing out the negligence of this Government when it comes to protecting the interests of New Zealanders. I am shocked that our offer from the Labour Party—we offered to support that legislation through all stages under urgency. We offered to support Government members on the Business Committee to make sure that a parallel copy of the bill could go through at the same first reading, so that we were debating two versions at the same time. We could have done that by leave of the House. All parties, I think, would have cooperated with that.

💬 Todd Barclay: It’s Thursday now.

“Thursday now.” It is Thursday—that is right. And what is your point? Is that your only contribution?

💬 Jono Naylor: He’s just waiting his turn.

He is waiting his turn, right. Well, it would be good if the members of the National Government did stand up and take a call to explain why it was that just yesterday they refused to have a parallel copy of the legislation—which is now an Act—and that was passed in respect of returning offenders from Australia and elsewhere, go to a select committee so that these very sorts of problems could be sorted out.

I have probably said enough in respect of that issue. I will return to the original theme of this legislation—

💬 Todd Barclay: Oh, that would be novel.

—which is that it is, obviously, desirable—well, it would be novel—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No. I am going to ask the member to resume his seat. I am going to suggest to members on my right that the member is making a serious contribution on very serious legislation that affects the lives and the safety of New Zealanders. I think flippant interjections like those made by two members are inappropriate in this circumstance.

We all know in this House that drug and alcohol abuse is associated with criminal offending. When people are under the influence of drugs and alcohol, their inhibitions reduce and they are more likely to do silly things that they might themselves later regret but that, certainly, their victims are adversely affected by. Accordingly, it is good if we can, as we move towards community-based sentences—and I would acknowledge the Hon Bill English in terms of some of the moral leadership that he has shown in the National Government in terms of recognising the ineffectiveness of some prison-based sentences and how it is more desirable that you have programmes both within prisons and after imprisonment to minimise recidivism. I think the Hon Bill English deserves some credit for that, and I give it to him. If you are going to move to those treatment programmes and things, part of the way in which you make them work is through the sorts of monitoring that is proposed by this bill, and that is why the Labour Party will be supporting it.

I rise to speak in the second reading of the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill. In response to one of the questions raised by the last speaker, David Parker, I just want to provide a clarification. Within the law that was passed yesterday for returned offenders there is a clause for special conditions that can be applied. One of those special conditions could be in relation to drug and alcohol testing. So it is, in fact, covered by the laws that were passed yesterday.

The important part of this piece of legislation is that it helps ensure conditions in relation to community-based offenders and bailees who are subject to being prohibited from using drug and alcohol substances so that, in fact, when they are released from prison they actually comply with those conditions. It gives the police and the Department of Corrections more flexibility to monitor and, in fact, test offenders who have been suspected of using the substances that they are being forbidden from using. So, I think, it helps the conditions to be met on a number of levels: first, because it is an obligation, for a start, for the offender not to use the substance in many cases. We know that two-thirds of prisoners have substance abuse problems, and around half of all crimes that are committed are committed by somebody under the influence of either drug or alcohol substances. So it helps to actually reinforce one of the conditions of their release, but also it helps to support them to stay away from one of their drivers of crime.

We know that for so many offenders, drug and alcohol abuse is a major factor. So it is an assistance for them in terms of their rehabilitation too. But, thirdly, it also protects the victims. Kelvin Davis and I were, today, sitting in on four Parole Board hearings up at Rimutaka Prison, and of the four, three of those hearings were in relation to offenders who had committed crimes under the influence of either drugs or alcohol. A major factor that was coming through there from the convenor of the Parole Board and the other two members sitting on it was that they were trying to extract a view around how these offenders, should they be released back into the community, were going to be prevented from falling into the same patterns of crime again. A major factor was around how they could convince the Parole Board that they would not be under the influence of drugs or alcohol or fall back into that pattern. So this piece of legislation is very important in relation to that.

I want to just touch on another point that the previous speaker made in relation to sexual crimes and the increase in reported crimes. That is right. There has been an increase in reported sexual violence - related crimes due to a number of factors, as the Minister of Police was describing today in question time. We have created an environment through our preventative approach to justice, which encourages more victims to come forward when they have been a victim of sexual crime. So, obviously, as part of that the reported numbers are going up and that is a reflection of that. We are taking sexual crimes very seriously, so I think that the flippant remarks by the Opposition were a bit unfounded.

In conclusion, I would just like to offer my support for this bill.

I am also pleased to speak on behalf of the Greens in supporting this bill. I guess, echoing the comments of my colleague Jan Logie, it is good that at this late point on a Thursday we can find a level of agreement in the House at the end of what has been quite an acrimonious week—and with good reason, I think—in the House. I think it is fair to say that, probably, a lot of members of the public would express some surprise that people on community sentences—bailees, parolees, and the like—who have drug and alcohol conditions placed on them are not already subject to some form of compliance other than the obvious, of course. For example, a police officer might see someone on bail in a pub with a beer in their hand. They are obviously offending, but to actually be able to monitor, to ensure compliance through a testing regime, is something we probably ought to have looked at some time ago. So it is good that at this point this bill is coming to the House and that we will in future have a measure of some legitimate framework for actually testing compliance with these very important conditions.

We know very well, of course, that alcohol and drug abuse are two major drivers of crime in New Zealand. Alcohol, particularly, is probably the single most serious driver of violent offending in New Zealand. The point is made in the report back from the Law and Order Committee, which considered this bill, that something like two-thirds of people who are on home detention, supervision, or intensive supervision in the community are people with measurable and often serious drug and alcohol abuse or addiction problems. I have actually heard District Court judges suggest that something like 75 to 80 percent of the people whom they see in that sorry parade before them—people who have been charged with offences—have offended while there has been alcohol or drugs involved. Either they are under the influence or in some measure there is an involvement with drugs and alcohol. So it is a serious problem and clearly one we need to deal with, not only at a legislative level but certainly in terms of our own national culture, particularly around alcohol use and abuse.

So we think it is a good bill. It puts a level of control on people. Yes, it does impose a level of intervention in people’s lives, but given the serious nature of the consequences when drugs and alcohol are used unwisely, we think it is appropriate.

It was a good select committee. I sat on it, and I think we hit the right spot, the right level. Again, referring to the select committee report, it makes the point that imposing and enforcing drug and alcohol conditions will play an important role in preventing reoffending and ensuring public safety. I think it is true to a point. I think this framework for measuring compliance is a necessary element, but on its own it is not sufficient to ensure public safety, and that is a point I will return to.

I think there is an upside to this. Some offenders, no doubt, will find it an imposition that they are obliged to concede to these tests, but there is an upside. The provision that we got put into the bill is that if people are tested, then the results of those tests—assuming they demonstrate sobriety and abstinence from drugs or alcohol—can be used in other proceedings as evidence. For example, if somebody is endeavouring to get visitation rights to children or some such, the evidence gathered from these tests can be used as evidence that these people are sober and, perhaps, in a better condition. It might assist them in getting access to children, or whatever the situation might be. So I think there is an upside. There is a positive side to the obligations placed on these people.

There was some conversation about the appropriateness of the conditions of bail often being set by registrars, and the point was made that, given that the new testing regime will impose a higher level of intervention in people’s lives, perhaps it should be a judicial officer who would solely be able to impose these conditions. I guess, again, the compromise that was found was that a registrar will continue to be able to impose conditions, as is current practice, but if the offender raises any objection to that, then it will be a judicial officer who is called upon to actually make that call. I think that also reflects, in part, a response to a letter we had from the Chief Justice along those lines. A submission from the Chief Justice pointed out that perhaps it was more appropriate that it be a judge or a judicial officer who does impose this.

I think it is also worth noting that the Chief District Court Judge also noted that the bill has the effect of raising the threshold for imposing drug and alcohol conditions for a community-based sentence. She expressed some concerns about the resource implications of that that might land on the court, and I do think that we need to take cognisance of that and ensure that, given the sheer volume of cases that come before the courts, that does not impose an unreasonable burden and, indeed, if it does have a resource implication, that the resources are made available to the courts.

Finally, I would just like to reference a very good submission we received from JustSpeak at the select committee. JustSpeak is the youth wing of Rethinking Crime and Punishment. It made very well-considered and very well-informed and very articulate submissions, and this is one of them. It makes the point that it agrees in principle with the intent of the bill. It accepts the value and necessity of imposing some sort of compliance framework on people who have these conditions. But it also argues that there is another side to the coin, and I return now to my comment earlier about the legislative requirement to submit being necessary but not sufficient in itself. As I say, two-thirds of these people have alcohol or other substance addiction issues. So simply saying “thou shalt not” is a deterrent to an extent, but it is not unreasonable to expect that while we impose that condition we also ensure that the resources are in place, that the facilities are in place, to enable these people to be treated for their drug abuse or their alcohol abuse conditions.

I know for a fact because I have measured it—admittedly in a way that was not scientific; it would not stand up to peer review. But anecdotally and being engaged in some of the communities that provide these services, I know there is an absolute deficit of treatment programmes available in New Zealand for people with serious drug and alcohol conditions. Be they community-based programmes, residential programmes—almost without exception, those programmes are oversubscribed. Where people are coming voluntarily to them, saying “Look, I’ve got a problem.” and they recognise that, very often they will be obliged to wait a number of weeks—at the worst end of it, even some months—before they can get access to those programmes. Even when people are referred by the court to the treatment programmes, often their immediate entry to them cannot be assured because there are capacity problems, and I think we need to get real about that. We need to recognise that reality, and I think it is in our interests at every level to pump more resource into that and to ensure that we build the capacity for when people either in themselves recognise they have a problem or when the courts determine that they must go and get treatment in an attempt to break their addiction to get them out of that cycle of drug or alcohol abuse.

I think it is incumbent upon us to ensure that those programmes are readily available, accessible, and on demand. It is no good to say to somebody who might be hanging on by their fingertips to some level of sobriety and keeping away from offending that there is no programme available. I think it is important that they have got quick access to those programmes at the point that they do need them—as I say, in their own selves if they have acknowledged their need, or when the courts direct them to do so.

With that qualification, to some extent, I do think we need to attend to that matter of the capacity, particularly within the community. It is relatively easy, I guess, for a person serving a custodial sentence to avoid drugs and alcohol—though, of course, they do exist in our prisons—but there are many more temptations in the way of people in the community. We need to provide them with the support and the assistance they will need to be able to comply with the good intention of this legislation. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill. This bill, rightly, amends three Acts of Parliament in an effort to reduce crime, to improve public safety, and, hopefully, to reduce reoffending. The majority of crimes are committed while the offender is under the influence of drugs or alcohol—and, most times, both.

Drug and alcohol abuse is more prevalent in our society than we would like to think. Tens of thousands of families are broken and children are taken away by Child, Youth and Family. Although youth facilities are a safer place than our streets, they are not the ideal place for our youth to grow up. Foster-care homes are only next-best, and in the absence of parental care our youth turn to drug and alcohol abuse when they are most vulnerable. Drug and alcohol abuse has also been identified as a major factor and a driver behind violent and sexual crimes. So we need to change the behaviour of these offenders and we need to break the cycle of drug abuse and crime. This bill, to a good extent, aims at changing the behaviour, and that is the reason we will support this bill at the Committee stage.

But we would also like to point out that this bill is not perfect—like most other things. The issue we have with this bill is that there is inadequate sharing of information between the two vital departments of our law and order machinery: namely, the Department of Corrections and the police. A very glaring example and a very live example of that was the Phillip John Smith escape case, where a criminal managed to make use of that lack of exchange of information and made his way all the way to Brazil, causing huge embarrassment to us. Had the Department of Corrections and the police been in greater sync with each other, this escape, we feel, could have been avoided, and so would the embarrassment caused to our nation.

There is an expectation in this bill that the chief executive of the Department of Corrections and the Commissioner of Police will work together to work out the modalities of this bill as to how these offenders and bailees would be monitored in terms of their drug and alcohol abuse while they are in the community. So there is a wee bit of ambiguity between the two departments. One department, at the moment, does not seem to know what the other one is doing, and they are too shy to share that information also, which can be vital to manage these offenders in the community and, of course, those who are on bail.

So our expectation is that it should be a requirement that these two departments work together, and not an expectation as it is in this bill. So we want to change that wording from “expectation” to “requirement” because in the absence of that requirement, there is room for ambiguity and there is room for confusion between the two departments. This is not fair on the bailees and the offenders who will be managed under this legislation, and it is definitely not fair on the victims of their crimes. Any room for ambiguity should be removed, and there should be clear guidelines for both the Department of Corrections and the police to work together to make this effective. We have seen this lack of communication between these two critical departments in the past, and we do not want to be the laughing stock of the world if the case of Phillip John Smith is repeated.

There is a human rights element to this piece of legislation also, and we must not forget that. The victims’ rights are paramount, but the offenders’ rights also have to be respected. Being shoved from pillar to post is not fair on those offenders who are chucked out of jail, put in the communities, and then they do not know what to do with themselves.

We have some concerns around the modalities of how it is going to work—whether the police are going to be managing only bailees and the Department of Corrections will manage the offenders in the community, is it going to be vice versa, or is there going to be some kind of distinction between the two? The taxpayer pays for the testing and treatment of offenders, and there has to be value for money for the taxpayer also. In addition to that, we feel that when the classification takes place for high-risk offenders, those offenders who have offended against children, women, or the elderly should be classified as high-risk offenders and they should be managed in the communities accordingly. Thank you.

I am pleased to stand and speak at the second reading of the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill. As you said, Mr Assistant Speaker, this is a very important piece of legislation. This is to do with the safety of our communities. This is to do with the rehabilitation and reintegration into our community of people who have offended. It is important to understand that in our justice system there are different reasons why people perhaps are imprisoned. They are to protect society, to bring a degree of seriousness and judgment over what their offence has been, and also to bring about the rehabilitation and reintegration of people. That is the reason why the Department of Corrections is called corrections—to bring about a change of behaviour.

It is important that when people on community-based sentences and bailees are active and moving around our communities, our communities are kept safe while these people are fulfilling their sentence and are also being rehabilitated and reintegrated into society in a positive way. So it is very fitting that we put these conditions as imposed by the court or requested by the police or the Department of Corrections upon these people, especially those who, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, have committed their offences.

We want, as a society, to address these issues. This month is White Ribbon month, and 25 November is White Ribbon Day. So many offences of violence in this nation happen under the influence of alcohol and drugs. This nation increasingly is becoming very much aware and very committed to addressing these issues. This piece of legislation is very important. I am pleased to say that the Law and Order Committee took a very mature approach and worked very well together in terms of coming together to bring our recommendations back to the House. I am very pleased to stand and recommend this bill at its second reading. Thank you.

Thank you for this opportunity to take a call on the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill, which the Labour Party is supporting. This bill is designed to ensure that people in the community who are on parole or on bail with conditions prohibiting the use of drugs and alcohol would undergo drug or alcohol testing or monitoring to ensure that they comply with those conditions. Even though we are supporting this bill, I have to say that it is somewhat distressing that this Government has taken 7 years—7 long years—to bring a bill requiring the drug and alcohol testing of criminals, which is 3 years after it decided to start drug testing our beneficiaries. It is 7 years too long.

Drug and alcohol misuse are constantly identified in research as major drivers of crime. Around 5,000 offenders each year are on community sentences and orders, and it is approximated that about 1,500 of them are bailees who have abstinence conditions that are imposed on them. However, it is only in very rare cases that these abstinence conditions require testing. Evidence from overseas—from Australia, from the UK, and from other countries—shows that when you actually impose conditions of monitoring, it actually works. According to the Department of Corrections, the rates of reoffending are particularly high, particularly for those on driving and domestic violence offences. Alcohol and drug abuse is a significant factor in those offences and these are crimes that potentially put a number of people at risk.

When we actually look at the cost of reoffending in human terms and in terms of lives lost, because some of these offenders when they are out on bail and they commit various offences—there are a lot of human lives that are lost. Unfortunately, some people get killed when these offenders are out on bail. In 2013 the Ministry of Justice figures showed that 31 people were killed by offenders who were out on bail: 11 people were murdered, 14 of them were victims of manslaughter, and six were killed by bailed offenders who were committing driving offences.

Testing for the presence of alcohol and drugs to improve compliance with abstinence is actually a really good thing. The Labour Party has a strong vision for this country. We are working hard for New Zealanders to ensure that we guarantee civil and human rights, that we provide equal justice for all, and that we achieve public safety rather than just delivering immediate punitive measures. We support this bill.

I just rise to take a very brief call on this bill and to support much of what David Clendon said, interestingly. He made a very good summation of the work of the Law and Order Committee and, of course, of how this bill was put together. I think this bill achieves a fair bit for our Government’s aspirations around law and order, and I have no problem commending this bill to the House.

Bill read a second time.

Name changed to Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders, Bailees, and Other Persons Legislation Bill.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.