Estimates Debate — Justice Sector (continued)

There are 4 hours and 10 minutes remaining in the debate. When we were last considering the bill, the Committee was dealing with the votes in the justice sector in the Estimates debate. Darroch Ball had the call and while he had 1 minute and 23 seconds, we will give him 2 minutes.

In the last 9 minutes that I was using for my last two calls last week, I concentrated on the funding, or lack thereof, really, of the police force, what the Government thought it was promising, and, really, the drivers of crime, because we hear about the drivers of crime from the National Government all time and how it is trying to tackle the drivers of the crime, but the real driver of crime, which I have highlighted on many occasions in this House, is the failing youth justice system.

I have brought it up so many times in this House that I do not think there is anyone who would stand up and really say that the youth justice system is actually working. There is no way that they could say that the youth justice system is working—with an 80 or 90 percent reoffending rate in the Youth Court, higher than that when offenders go to a youth justice residence, and a 60 to 70 percent reoffending rate when the police are dealing with them through diversion, and especially when you look at the major indicators of youth crime, you see that the serious offences are increasing. No one can deny that. In 10 out of 12 police districts within the last couple of measureable calendar years—2015 and 2016—offences have increased by 40 percent.

The reactive approach from this Government is more police. Well, unfortunately, you cannot arrest your way out of a failing justice system. If you do not have a justice system that backs up the increased number of police, it will not work. We need a justice system that is accountable, that ensures there is personal responsibility taken by the young people, and, of course, one where there is consistency of consequences. And all of those things need funding, which there is very little of. You need resources and, basically and fundamentally, the youth justice system needs to be completely overhauled. If this Government really wants to make some inroads into the serious offences being committed by the young people of this country, it needs to put some funding into the youth justice system.

It is great to be able to stand up and speak just after that member, Darroch Ball, who was talking about there being not enough funding for the justice sector, when actually, when we look through these Estimates for the Budget for the 2017/18 year, what we see across the board is, in fact, additional funding.

I do just want to acknowledge the great work that has been done by the Ministers across the justice sector: obviously, Ministers Bennett in Police, Adams in Justice, and Collins in Corrections, because, as I said, we are seeing increased funding and increased emphasis going into the whole sector across the board. In fact, when we look at the extra 1,125 police staff, there are, of course, 880 front-line police. In terms of intervention at that level, it is great that we are going to see extra people out there who have a twofold purpose. By having extra police it makes it easier for us to catch those who are perpetrating crimes, but, of course, when we are seeing extra resources out there patrolling in more communities what that also has is a preventative measure aspect to it as well. So, by having extra police, we have those who are obviously able to work harder, as I said, in catching those people who are committing crimes, but also work in that preventative space as well.

I want to particularly touch on the area of Corrections, where there is, in fact, $255.9 million in funding going in over the next 4 years to help to deliver core services and reduce reoffending. Now it is not very often that it happens that you necessarily have somebody fresh out of prison come into your office, but, actually, yesterday, in my office in Palmerston North, I had somebody come into my office who had been released from prison only last Tuesday. He wanted to come to see me to talk about the fact that he wanted to make a video to actually help to encourage people who are in prison to stop them from reoffending, to stop them from wanting to go back to prison or doing the sorts of things that would lead them back. It was interesting, actually, he thought it was—one of the reasons was that life in prison was too easy, but that was just his take on it, interestingly enough.

But I think by us actually having extra funding to put into those areas, that can help reduce reoffending. We have actually got people who have been in prison a number of times themselves wanting to commit to helping others to do that. I think it is great that he is actually committed to wanting to help in that way.

I also want to touch on the introduction of the new non-emergency numbers for reporting. I think this is a great initiative. I know that on a number of occasions I have used the ⃰555 number. Thankfully, I have hands-free on my car phone so I can utilise that. But, actually, it has been a great tool for people to be able to report non-emergency issues while on the road. And the introduction of a number that will be easy for people to remember, easy for people to access—they are not necessarily having to go to the phone book to look for the local phone number for the police, for those people who still use phone books, that is, of course. It took me a while to find mine at home the other day, actually.

💬 Richard Prosser: And have one in the car. Ha, ha!

But anyway—I certainly do not have it in the car, that is for sure. It is bad enough driving while using a phone. It would be worse to be reading a phone book, I am sure, particularly when you are getting a bit middle-aged and you need reading glasses or something. But that said, I think this initiative just goes to show that this is a Government that is committed across the board to the Justice Sector and that is actually still full of innovation and still looking for new ways that we can help reduce crime, make it easier for people to report crime, and also reduce the level of reoffending as well.

There has been a great record, I believe, from this Government over the last 3 years, or 9 years, in fact, in addressing issues of domestic violence, by putting things in place that will make it easier for people to report, putting things in place for victims—and these estimations are a carry on from this. Going from strength to strength is what we are doing. It is great to see these initiatives going forward, and I commend the Estimates in this area to the Committee.

It is a pleasure to take a call on the Estimates. I would like to focus also on Corrections. We just heard the member who finished speaking, Jono Naylor, say that Corrections is looking for innovation. Well, the trouble with the innovation that we are seeing from Corrections is that it is very stilted and stifled innovation.

There are some really exciting examples of best-practice corrections innovation throughout the world, in Scandinavia in particular, and what do we do with that innovation? We actually totally ignore it. And if we are looking to fulfil the mission statement of Corrections, which is to make New Zealand safer—making New Zealand safer is not just by locking people up. In fact, we have got 10,200 people locked up in prison now. The big thing about that is just about every single one of those 10,200 people is going to come out of prison at some stage, and we cannot be living under the illusion that by locking up people and mistreating them in prison they are going to come out of prison in a better state of mind.

We have just heard that $259.9 million is going to be spent on core services and reducing offending. Well, that sounds really good. The trouble, though, with our programmes in prisons is that—and Corrections acknowledges it in its own annual report—the results of the reoffending programmes produce results that are less than statistically significant.

As a former school principal, if I produced results for the students that were less than statistically significant, I would have got the sack. I would have been moved on. But we still pretend that it is OK to produce results that are less than statistically significant in prisons, and we do not do anything, really, to weed out those programmes that are not effective.

In the Estimates, we were told that 62 percent of people who arrive in prison arrive with a substance abuse or mental health issue. Now we do very, very little to address the underlying causes of their offending. We do have $14 million being invested to address that. Now, that is four social workers and four counsellors in the women’s prison.

The question I asked the Minister at the Law and Order Committee was—because Corrections says the healthcare in prisons is as good as that outside of prisons. And if that is the case, if I had a mental health issue, I would think that best practice for me would be a visit to a counsellor or someone to help me with my mental health issue probably once a week for an hour or so. The question was to the Minister: does that 60 percent of prisoners—that is, some 6,000 prisoners—with a mental health issue or a substance abuse issue get to see the counsellor for about an hour a week? And the answer is, of course, no.

So how can we say that we are really making gains in terms of these people, helping them with their mental health issues and addressing the underlying factors that cause their offending if all we have got is $14 million? The problem is so much bigger, so much broader, and we need to invest a heck of a lot more.

We heard that Corrections is expecting another thousand prisoners to turn up to prison over the next few years. I say that figure is inaccurate and that we are going to have more than a thousand prisoners turning up to prisons over the next few years. The trajectory we are on, if it continues, means we will have 4,000 or 5,000 prisoners over the next couple of years, and that does not make New Zealand a safer place. It just means we lock up more people.

The conditions in prison are such that those with mental health issues actually need support and rehabilitation in a better environment, not concrete and bars. They are not treated well in there in many instances. They are not getting the support they need. They are actually often teased, antagonised, beaten, and broken, and yet we expect them to come out of prison after their sentence and we say: “Despite the fact that you’ve been treated like that, we want you to be good people after this.” It just does not work. It is like kids turning up to school and we mistreat them, abuse them, yell at them, scream at them, and say: “Oh, by the way, now you’ve got to pass an exam.” It just does not happen that way.

In the short remaining time I have got left, I tell members that I have spoken to an expert in the field. He says that 30 percent of people actually get their mental health issue inside prison, and that is not right.

I am pleased to take a call on the Justice Sector part of this debate. We have heard from two members of the Opposition about some of the stressors, some of the failures, of the justice system currently. I agree with Mr Ball that the youth justice area is under considerable stress and is broken. He and I might disagree about some of the solutions, but we certainly agree that we need to do something a great deal better.

Similarly, Mr Davis highlighted some of the problems with Corrections, Again, Opposition MPs are often told that we identify things as problems and then insist on more money being thrown at them. Actually, I am not convinced that we need to spend more money on the justice sector collectively, but we need to spend it very differently. I would offer one obvious example in Corrections. The annual budget for Corrections this year is something between $1.6 billion and $1.7 billion. Sixty-six percent of that—66c out of every dollar—will be spent simply locking people away. Fourteen cents out of every dollar will be spent on rehabilitation, reintegration, education programmes, and all the positive solutions, and a little bit remaining is given over to supervising community sentences. If we just shifted that ratio, that balance of spend, just a little bit each year for the next 10 years, I think we would get remarkably different outcomes quite quickly.

We are so focused at the moment on spending enormous amounts of money in ways that simply perpetuate the problem that we are missing the opportunities to spend that money in ways that actually offer real solutions. I see considerable opportunity for a cross-party consensus. If we can simply agree that our system is broken, that we are not getting the outcomes that we all collectively want, then I think we can simply start looking at that spend and start shifting it in other ways.

As I have said, I believe the justice system is in bad shape. It is under considerable stress. An example of that is just simply getting access to justice. For many people, that is a step too far—for example, for many people needing to get into the Family Court, using legal aid. That has become so oversubscribed and under-resourced that many people are simply giving up. In recent times I have spoken to a number of family lawyers—people who do work in the Family Courts—who are simply stepping away from legal aid work because they simply cannot afford to continue doing it. That is true particularly of smaller practices, but, equally, some of the larger concerns. They are simply saying that they cannot afford to keep taking the loss because that very critical part of the system is simply under-resourced. We need to do a great deal better there.

The specialist courts, the alcohol and drug treatment court for one, are succeeding in ways that other practices have not. I sat in on one of those courts for a day about 2 weeks ago. We heard from one man who had had 15 drink-driving convictions and numerous prison sentences. Nothing much changed in his life until he went through the alcohol and drug treatment court and its programme. It took him 2 years. He came out the other side a changed man—straight and sober, working, involved with his family, and back in touch with his kids. That programme worked where other programmes simply had not, and yet we are continuing, frankly, to meddle about with the pilot and not really resource it sufficiently despite the proven success of that programme.

I think that is one way we could spend a lot more money much more productively—on other forms of specialist courts, homeless courts, and those sorts of initiatives, which, to be fair, the system is starting to experiment with. We need to actually mainstream a lot of those. We need to make them adapt and adopt best practice that we have seen overseas, and start looking for real solutions, because they do exist and we know what they look like.

The Greens have supported the increase in the Police budget to enable the Police to put more front-line officers out there and to have more support staff around them. We did see an absolute deficit in that. The evidence was compelling for at least 2 years before the Government did eventually agree with everybody else that the Police needed more resource. That is a necessary step, to give the Police more officers so that they can do their job better and to take the load off individual officers and stations. But it is not sufficient. We need more than that. Part of the reason the police are stretched, and have been considerably stretched, is an increase in offending around people who have mental health challenges and are having substance addiction—those sorts of difficulties that are emerging.

We need, as well, to be investing more in giving the police the tools to fulfil, for example, their Prevention First strategy, to build their neighbourhood policing teams, and to enable them to do the preventative work that they want to do. Again, Mr Ball made a comment that you cannot arrest your way out of a crisis or a problem. I think 99.9 percent of police would absolutely agree with that. They do not want to be constantly arresting and re-arresting people. They want to break that cycle. The police cannot do it on their own. They need to have the community-based drug and alcohol support, the mental health system—which, again, is in disarray.

Until we get rid of some of the waiting lists—for example, a person with an addiction problem, a substance abuse problem, is currently likely to wait for a minimum of 3 or 4 weeks. I know for sure that not so long ago in Auckland anybody either self-referring or being referred by the courts for treatment for P addiction or abuse was looking at about a 3-month delay. That is utterly ridiculous. That is a lifetime for a person with an addiction. Three months is ample time for them to offend, reoffend, and you are back putting up the load on the justice system, rather than spending it constructively in health treatment and addiction abuse treatment.

Corrections is something of a pet issue of mine, and I share in that with the new deputy leader of the Labour Party, Kelvin Davis, who is doing a lot of good work there. This Government has committed to spend $1 billion on increasing capacity in our prisons, essentially to build more cells—one new prison around Waikeria. Additionally, it is talking about another $763 million over 4 years, again, simply to build more cells, to keep more people locked up for longer. That is such an incredibly wasteful application of public money that there ought to be an inquiry, and I am sort of almost serious in that.

I see the support services, the programmes that can actually deal with people’s cycle of offending and reoffending, almost going under for want of $20,000 or $30,000. I see the community law sector, which enables people to get access to the Justice Sector in ways that can make their lives better and easier and often, in the long run, can also reduce reoffending, absolutely running on empty. I see it looking for all sorts of creative and innovative ways to generate other income streams, and I see people burning out because they know that no matter how hard they work, how many hours they do, or how thinly they stretch every dollar, they are still not meeting need. That is a classic recipe for burnout, and we are seeing it in community law.

But in the prisons we are spending, as I say, enormous amounts of money on simply keeping people locked away. That is amazingly wasteful. We need to get real, both about community-based programmes and indeed the programmes available within the prisons. We do see that there have been some improvements just in the last 2 or 3 years. There are now programmes existing that do deal with drug and alcohol problems, recognising, as people enter prison for the first time, they do get a psychological assessment—an assessment of their needs. But none of this is being properly resourced.

The mental health assessments being done are being done in good faith by committed people but they are not specialists, and nor do they have sufficient time to really drill into these people, who are often people with quite deep-seated and complex mental problems. It is simply unreasonable to expect a registered nurse, a general nurse—a competent person certainly, but it is unreasonable to expect the level of investigation of a person’s mental state in a 20-minute interview, using basically what is a tick-box tool. It simply is unreasonable to expect any positive outcomes from that.

We need to shift the mind-set. We need to shift the culture of Corrections away from containment and punishment, and move it towards genuine innovation—thinking: why are these people landing up in jail again and again and again? How do we break that cycle? How do we put in place and move the resource away from this wasteful spending and move it into something that will deliver positive outcomes for us?

I believe that that will be a 10-year project. I think it will take us 10 years. There are some legislative changes we need to make. The Parole Act, the Bail Act, the Sentencing Act—we do need to address those. But ultimately we need a culture change. We need to reallocate resources to get good outcomes. Thank you.

Let me talk about Vote Police. But first of all I want to say hearty congratulations to Jacinda Ardern and our new deputy leader, Kelvin Davis. This is a dynamic team that is going to take a new energy and a new drive and a new face into this election campaign. It is actually worth noting that both Jacinda and Kelvin have been past police spokespersons for our party, and this shows the focus and the drive and the energy and the commitment we are going to be making and taking into the police portfolio.

There are a couple of things that are worth noting in this report. The first one is that we noted that, in fact, the Police put one bid in—that is all; just one Budget bid. We also noted that that received less than 75 percent of the original funding asked for by the Police. The whole committee was concerned about the costs to the community of the Police getting less than 75 percent of what it asked the Minister of Finance for.

We are in trouble in our communities. I disagree with Darroch Ball. He said you cannot arrest your way out of the justice system, and having more police will not work. No one is ever suggesting we can arrest our way out of the problem we are in at the moment. But what we are all suggesting—what New Zealand First is suggesting, and certainly what Labour is suggesting—is that we need more police on the beat. That is why Labour has committed 1,000 more police in its first 3 years in Government—1,000 more police—plus the staff associated with that.

But it is not about arresting our way out of the problem. It is about crime prevention. It is about putting more officers into our communities so they understand what is going on, so they know the dynamics of who is doing what in our communities, and so they can prevent the crime. We are locking up too many people these days. Our Corrections budget is $900 million more now than it was 12 years ago—$900 million a year more to keep men and women in jail. That is not a good use of taxpayers’ money.

We talked about the fact that we have a real problem with P, with methamphetamine. We saw the Government come out, I think it was yesterday, or certainly over the weekend, and almost admit it is losing this war on P. I spoke to the Mayor of the Far North a couple of weeks ago, and he told me that P is free on the streets of Kaikohe. It is free, until someone becomes addicted and then they are in the grasp and the tangled web of the gangs. That is absolutely wrong, and we need more resources in our organised crime squads so we can come after the gangs that are peddling this death into our communities.

When the price of P is cheaper and it is more plentiful than it was 8 years ago, after the then Prime Minister John Key declared a war on drugs, we know there is something wrong. We know there needs to be a change in strategy, and that is what we are going to deliver on.

We also noted that the Budget showed that the resolution rates for property crime are going to remain stable at 13 percent, and that the resolution rates for crime against the person are going to remain stable at 43 percent. It has been this way for the last 4 years, and the Budget documents show it is going to be like this for the next year. This does not give the people of New Zealand the confidence that the police are resourced in a way that is going to keep us safe and solve crime and put the bad guys behind bars. We have to do better than this. What this says is that 87 percent of burglaries are going to go unresolved, and that is unacceptable.

What we know is that family violence has gone through the roof. In fact, 41 percent of police call outs are to family violence incidents. We need to change this statistic. What we do know is that the police attended 17,000 more family violence call outs last year than they did the year before. That is a sad indictment of what is going on in our communities. Again, this is why we say we need community police in there to find out, to know what is going on before it happens, and to put interventions in place. The shame of this is that the 100,000 calls that the police attend every year for family violence makes up only 20 percent of the estimated 500,000 incidents of domestic violence in our country. It is terrible. That is all I have to say for now.

It is really interesting that if you stay around here long enough, you hear the people who were in Government criticising the current people in Government for things that actually happened under their watch as well. I am very mindful of that every time I hear Labour speeches about corrections and police. I have to say that a thousand extra police is not a new novelty.

I have to say that when a Government is appropriating more money to prisons against a backdrop of pathetically low resolution rates, it is conclusive evidence that the Government has failed in corrections, failed in rehabilitation, and that the Government is failing in the youth Justice Sector. I mean, how can you be building more prisons at a time when you are getting less convictions—ridiculous.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Fewer.

Fewer convictions. What it does is it says that the youth justice system is failing and it is time for an overhaul, because it is those numbers in the youth justice system that are going on to graduate and become adult criminals. Until this House gets its head around that fact and accepts New Zealand First’s view that raising the age of criminal responsibility is a dumb move, we are just going to continue to see more of these people going into prison and hear more politicians bleating on about how awful that is when they are the very ones creating it.

I have got to take the Government to task on this extra resourcing. How bizarre that we can have a Government member stand up and say that the Government is putting more money into policing, when New Zealand First revealed back in June that Police has been so underfunded it has been going cap in hand to the Justice Sector slush fund. In going to the Justice Sector slush fund, which is a fund made up of all the surpluses—they put all the surpluses from the Justice Sector into this fund of money that has not been spent, and then they bid for it; they bid for it for such things as wages. I have got the report here, obtained under the Official Information Act, dated May—dated May—that shows that on 12 occasions Police was out of money and had to go to the Justice Sector slush fund to make a bid to pay things such as wages. So how can anyone on that Government side stand up and say honestly that the police are resourced sufficiently? If they were resourced sufficiently, they would not run out.

Then we have things popping out of the woodwork that tell us that crimes are not being—I will hold this one for later. Crimes are not being investigated, not being prosecuted, because “the police are unable to instruct the ESR to undertake a scene examination and provide forensic evidence to [the] prosecution.” because of a lack of funds. We have to sit here and endure listening to Ministers standing up day after day, week after week, month after month, saying that the police have got the resources, yet all the paper evidence, obtained under the Official Information Act, says that is not the truth.

So we do not support this Government’s Budget. We find that its appropriations are actually all smoke and mirrors. We do not accept it, and we seriously, seriously, say to the Government and to this House and to all those parties that supported the raising of the age of criminal responsibility: how can anyone accept—particularly, Māori MPs sitting here who are very quick to go on about the number of Māori incarcerated, how can they accept the building of a new prison to take more prisoners against decreasing resolution rates and, apparently, a youth justice system that is world class? Well, I will tell you what it is world class in—it is world class at failing young people. It is world class in ensuring that they go on to become adults and then get imprisoned as quickly as they offend after their 17th birthday. The only thing that is going to happen now is that by the time they become eligible to be held responsible under the adult justice system, they will be a year older, a year smarter, and a year deeper into crime. That is an appalling indictment on every party in this House that supported such a move.

Votes agreed to.

Māori, Other Populations and Cultural Sector