Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill

I move, That the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill be now read a second time. Many offenders serving sentences or orders in the community are subject to conditions restricting their whereabouts. Such conditions are of two broad types. The first requires the offender to be in a particular place—for example, an approved residential address. The second type of whereabouts condition prohibits entry to certain areas. For example, a released child sex offender may have a condition requiring them to avoid places such as schools or parks that are likely to be frequented by children.

Electronic monitoring provides an additional tool in the overall management of offenders. It supports the effective supervision of probation officers, use of interventions and programmes, regular risk assessments, and pro-social community support. Electronic monitoring already plays an important part in deterring and detecting breaches of whereabouts conditions. The courts can impose electronic monitoring as a condition of bail to verify compliance with the requirement to be at the bail address. They can also impose electronically monitored sentences that confine the offender to an approved residence at defined times, or at other times except for approved absences, and the New Zealand Parole Board can impose electronic monitoring as a special condition of release from a prison sentence of over 2 years or of an extended supervision order.

However, there are legislative barriers to expanding the use of electronic monitoring in the criminal justice system. This bill will improve the safety of victims and the general public by removing such barriers. Specifically, the courts will be able to impose electronic monitoring in the following situations: first, when sentencing an offender to up to 2 years’ imprisonment, the court will be able to impose electronic monitoring as a special condition of release, and, second, when sentencing an offender to intensive supervision, which is a community-based rehabilitative sentence of between 6 months and 2 years. The bill includes provisions designed to ensure that these new powers are used in a manner that is appropriate and effective, including a requirement for the court to obtain advice from the Department of Corrections before imposing an electronic monitoring condition. Defining the purposes of an electronic monitoring condition—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: I raise a point of order, Mr Assistant Speaker. We are really interested to hear what the Minister has to say, but, for some reason, her microphone is not working and her voice is very, very quiet. I wonder whether she could speak directly into it so we could hear what she is saying.

Thank you. The bill defines the purposes of an electronic monitoring condition as deterring breaches of conditions that prohibit entry into specified places or areas, and monitoring compliance with such conditions. It sets out the permitted uses of information collected by electronic monitoring, including, among others, detecting and providing evidence of the commission of offences. It makes clear that offenders may be required to have electronic monitoring equipment attached to their bodies and to comply with written instructions—for example, to regularly charge the equipment.

Not only are we progressing this legislation to allow the wider use of electronic monitoring but also we are improving our operational systems for those already being monitored. There have been recent incidents where offenders subject to electronic monitoring have removed their straps and absconded. The Department of Corrections has responded swiftly to these incidents by making changes to the way we deal with electronic monitoring alerts for high-risk offenders. If an offender removes or tampers with their anklet, there is an immediate response; police are advised, and if the strap is cut, offenders are held to account and may face penalties imposed by the court. The Department of Corrections and Police have compiled a list of the highest-risk offenders on electronic monitoring. Following a tamper alert for any of these offenders, the contract provider is required to immediately contact the GPS Immediate Response Team at the Department of Corrections, which then decides on an approved course of action. This has greatly improved the effectiveness in terms of locating offenders and keeping the public safe.

We are also strengthening the bracelets themselves. A new strengthened strap has been developed to be used in the electronic monitoring of the highest-risk offenders. The new strap is stronger and much harder to cut. The Department of Corrections has ordered a thousand of these new straps, which are currently being manufactured. The new straps will be fitted to existing and new high-risk offenders from August 2016.

I would like to thank the Law and Order Committee for its work on this bill. The bill as reported back includes a number of changes. Most notably, it contains amendments to the Corrections Act, clarifying that some prisoners may be subject to electronic monitoring when they are outside the secure perimeter of a prison. New Zealand’s prisons are surrounded by razor wire fences and the vast majority of prisoners spend their time within that boundary. However, some prisoners are permitted to go outside the wire for various reasons. Examples include prisoners who are removed under escort to a hospital for treatment, some prisoners who are close to release and live in external self-care units that are located on prison land but are outside the secure perimeter, and prisoners near the end of their time in custody who may also be granted daily release to work, returning to the prison at night. Escape risk is considered carefully before any prisoner is temporarily released or removed or allowed to live or work outside the wire, and appropriate measures are taken to mitigate the risk.

Nevertheless, the risk cannot be eliminated entirely. The use of GPS technology can provide additional assurances that prisoners who are allowed to be outside the prison’s secure perimeter will not attempt to escape. In the rare case that escape is attempted, GPS monitoring may assist the Department of Corrections and police to respond more quickly. It is neither necessary nor technically feasible to use GPS technology to monitor every prisoner who is outside the wire. However, the amendments will clarify that the department can use this technology where appropriate. The amendments relating to prisoners also set out the purposes of electronic monitoring and the permitted uses of the information. These are based on comparable provisions in the bill that are in the Parole Act, with necessary modifications.

Before concluding, I would like to comment briefly on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues. This bill attracted a report from the Attorney-General under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but the Law and Order Committee subsequently concluded that the bill is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. In my view, the positions of the Attorney-General and the committee are not as far apart as may be suggested. It is clear from the Attorney-General’s report that issues of compliance with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act do not arise from the main policy of the bill but from minor technical amendments to the Parole Act, in Part 1, and the only reason these amendments were considered to be a problem is that they will apply to extended supervision orders, which have been declared to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. To summarise, the Attorney-General and the select committee reached different conclusions about the bill’s technical compliance. Nevertheless, there seems to be a broad agreement that the key proposal in the bill—namely, to expand provision for the electronic monitoring of offenders—is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

It would be wrong to think that electronic monitoring of offenders is some sort of panacea. However, in concert with a range of other measures, it can make a significant contribution to maintaining public safety and, indirectly, to rehabilitating certain offenders. In addition to the situations where electronic monitoring is already available, the bill will enable it to be used as a special condition of release from a short-term sentence of imprisonment and as a special condition of a sentence of intensive supervision. The bill also clarifies that electronic monitoring can be used for prisoners who are outside the secure perimeter of a prison. Overall, the bill should mean that the potential benefits from electronic monitoring are more fully realised while providing appropriate safeguards for offenders.

I rise to speak on the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill, which the Labour Party does support. It amends three Acts: the Corrections Act 2004, the Sentencing Act 2002, and also some amendments to the Parole Act of 2002. To clarify the situation for the House and for people listening, I would just like to go through the matrix that the Department of Corrections has provided to the Law and Order Committee that describes when different electronic monitoring systems need to be put in place, because it is quite confusing.

When someone is found guilty of a crime, the least restrictive punishment before they are sentenced is that they are bailed into the community. The next least restrictive is that they receive electronic bailing—so they go out into the community still, but it is electronic bail. Then the most restrictive is that they are remanded into custody. So that is all before they are sentenced, and the court does that sentencing. And then the least restrictive of the sentencing is community work, and most people will know that as periodic detention, or PD. When I was the principal at Kaitāia Intermediate School, every 6 weeks or so we would get the PD gang to come in and help tidy up the school and the gardens and to do various jobs. Basically, that is so that those people atone for a minor crime they may have committed in the community.

The next step is supervision. So if it is supervision, it is a community-based rehabilitation sentence that requires offenders to address the causes of their offending. The next step up is intensive supervision, and we are looking to bring electronic monitoring into intensive supervision, in some cases. Intensive supervision is a longer sentence and it involves attending programmes to address issues that led to offending. The next level up—we are getting more severe now—is community detention, which is basically a curfew that requires electronic monitoring. So somebody might still be able to go to work, but between the hours of, say, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., they have to be at a certain residence, or the curfew might mean they are not allowed to go near other people or other places. The next step up is home detention, where somebody has residential conditions. They have to stay at a residence basically 24/7, maybe with an hour out each week to go and do their shopping or go and see the doctor or pay bills, or whatever. Then, after home detention, the next most serious sentence is a term of imprisonment for fewer than 2 years, which is pretty self-explanatory. The next most serious is a term of imprisonment greater than 2 years. Only the court can impose those sentences.

The next part of an offender’s journey, I guess you could say, is the release and the post-sentence order. The least restrictive is the post-detention conditions. Then, going up the scale, there is release at half of the sentence’s term, and they have conditions with that. Those are imposed by the court. And then the next level up is parole release conditions imposed at the sentence expiry date, and they are imposed by the Parole Board. This is another one of the areas where we are looking to, in this case, beef up the electronic monitoring. Above that are extended supervision orders, where offenders, mainly highly violent or sexual offenders, need to be highly monitored once their sentence is over and they are back in the community. Then, public protection orders are another step up again.

That matrix I think is really important because when you have all these different orders—many of them sound very similar, such as intensive supervision, which is a sentence, and then you have extended supervision orders—it is easy for people to get confused as to where everything sits. But the thing with electronic monitoring is that it does work if it is done well. The basic reason for it is to make sure that people are where they should be. If they are subject to the conditions of electronic monitoring, the bracelets ensure that the person is where they should be. But it also raises an alert if the person ends up somewhere where they should not be—it raises an alert.

The next thing is that electronic monitoring can provide evidence to show that the person was in the wrong area. So it is one thing to get an alert—the person absconds and ducks off somewhere where they should not be, but then comes back. The GPS tracking of the electronic monitoring bracelet can be used to show that they were somewhere where they should not have been. You can also use the bracelet—I am not sure how this works, though—to make sure that the person has not tampered with the electronic monitoring device.

The reasons for electronic monitoring are to make sure that if somebody has committed a crime and has a condition where they, say, should not associate with gang members, then that will be part of the conditions. The bracelet can tell whether or not they have gone near a gang residence. They might not be allowed near a school or near a park, or they might not be allowed there at certain times of the day. So that is what electronic monitoring does.

The thing with electronic monitoring, though, is that it is only as good as the monitoring. We have heard, over the last couple of months, actually, about a number of offenders who have cut off their bracelets. It is good to hear that the Minister has ordered a thousand of these new tough electronic bracelets from somewhere, and that they are going to be used. As it stands right now, an offender can basically walk down to the nearest Warehouse and buy a $2 pair of scissors and cut off the bracelet.

We heard, in the last 2 days too, that on any given day there is somewhere between 20 and 47 offenders who have removed their bracelets and are running around in a community somewhere. The Government tried to downplay that by saying: “Well, 47—that’s less than 1 percent of all the offenders who have got bracelets.” The Government should not downplay that, because it means there is somewhere between 20 and 47 communities that do not know where somebody is. That person is running around in their community. That is 20 to 47 communities that are living in fear. If you take a community like Kaitāia, which has a population of about 5,000, that means there are just under 200,000 people in New Zealand who are living in fear. They do not know where an offender could be at any particular time. So I do not think the Government should downplay those numbers. It is very serious to the people who are most affected—that is, all the communities around New Zealand. Right now they do not know where these people are. They do not know where they are running around. Most of them will not go and commit a crime, but we do not know which ones of them will not go and commit that crime.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.