Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I want to begin by thanking the Justice Committee for its consideration of the bill. The committee received 52 written submissions and heard 19 oral submissions. Before moving on to the Justice Committee’s excellent recommendations, I want to provide a brief summary of the most important aspects of the bill as it was introduced.

The bill will see real, practical steps taken to enhance prison and public safety by ensuring that there is a clearer and stronger legislative framework to manage prisoners who pose an extreme risk to prison and public safety while balancing natural justice. The chief executive of Corrections will be empowered to make interim and final designation decisions to manage our most dangerous prisoners more restrictively. These are the prisoners who are exceptionally dangerous in prison, or those prisoners whose risk and influence would extend beyond the prison environment if they were not subject to more restrictive management.

The bill will ensure that final determinations for these prisoners known as designated management prisoners, or DMPs, are made following a rigorous assessment process informed by an expert advisory panel’s recommendation. The test applies as established in new section 52C inserted by clause 12. The prisoner must pose an extreme risk to prison or public safety and need more restrictive management to manage that risk. The provisions in new sections 52D and 52F further describe aspects of this test and, when read together, have a moderating effect. This should significantly limit the number of prospective DMPs that are considered for designation. As DMPs are subject to more restrictive management than the general prison population, it is important to ensure decisions are made effectively, with the prisoner receiving clear communications about the designation process. Prisoners will be able to provide the panel with written information or a submission before they make a recommendation, and they’ll also have clear rights of review.

The bill also amends Corrections’ powers to segregate prisoners from the mainstream prison population for public safety reasons, and to do so in ways that better protect prisoners’ rights. The bill includes minimum meaningful human contact requirements, which are introduced into the Act for the first time. It will also allow Corrections to apply to the High Court for an order to destroy the property of a prisoner who is designated a terrorist entity if that property poses harm to the community if it leaves prison. The bill better enables Corrections to mitigate the risk of prisoner trust accounts being used for nefarious purposes.

The Justice Committee recommended several changes to the bill, which strengthened fairness, transparency, and accountability, while also ensuring the bill is more operationally achievable. I will focus recent on the most important recommendations for the remainder of my time.

As I mentioned before, DMPs pose an extreme risk to prison and or public safety and their risk may relate to their ability to influence others other than their risk to direct physical violence. In this respect, they are different to other high or maximum security prisoners. The committee suggested important refinements to the test for designation that are important to include in the bill. The nature of prisoner risks and offending can change over time, even while in the prison environment. I appreciate the committee’s recommendation to amend the meaning of “serious offences” in new section 52D to capture any serious offence under New Zealand or international law, with particular references to drug offending, money laundering, and human trafficking, among others. The Act needs to be future-focused to respond effectively to very criminal behaviour, and this change will better achieve that. The committee also recommended refining this position and the new segregation ground relating to radicalisation or recruitment to an ideology. These changes ensure that the grounds are more appropriately targeted at significant terrorism and violent extremism. This helps ensure that the most restrictive management measures are reserved for those prisoners whose behaviours and risk profiles warrant them.

The committee strengthened the natural justice and good record-keeping processes. It is significant to be designated as a DMP and be subjected to more restrictive management, and it is equally important to provide these prisoners with natural justice. The designation decision is an administrative decision informed by a panel. I consider the chief executive of Corrections as still the right person to make this decision. However, given the perception of potential bias and impropriety, the bill has been amended to require the chair or acting chair to be independent of Corrections.

The bill already required a DMP to be provided with various notices about their designation and the panel convening, and the right to provide written submissions or information to the panel as soon as reasonably practicable. I welcome the Justice Committee’s recommendation to bolster these provisions. Prisoners will be provided with support to understand the notices provided and will receive assistance to make a submission should they have communication difficulties. They’ll also receive information when they are designated, including a copy of the panel’s recommendation, a summary of reasons behind the recommendation, and the reasons for any disagreement within the panel. The timing for these provisions in new section 52I have also been qualified on the basis that notice must be provided as soon as reasonably practicable to the extent that it would not create a risk of adversely affecting public or prison safety.

Another technical but important revision is that the chief executive and the panel must record their decisions and recommendations respectively, including the reasons behind the decision and the information relied on. This includes the reasons why the chief executive disagreed with the panel if applicable. The review provisions have also been amended to reflect prison realities, prevent vexatious reviews from occurring, and to ensure timely decision making. I welcome the committee’s suggested changes to the review provisions. Relevant prisoner managers will be responsible for alerting the chief executive about whether a review may be warranted, with prisoner-initiated reviews only able to take place once every six months.

Previously, the bill was silent on the timeliness of these reviews, but that has now changed. The chief executive must assess whether a full review is required within 28 calendar days of been notified, and would then need to conduct a full review within 28 to 42 days after making this decision. I consider this an appropriate balance between enabling effective operations, preventing the possibility of vexatious reviews from occurring, and ensuring natural justice can occur.

The Government remains committed to prohibiting prolonged solitary confinement, and the committee has inserted a new provision explicitly banning this practice. The bill continues to require all prisoners to receive at least 10 hours of meaningful human contact every fortnight. The committee made important changes to these provisions to ensure there is no possibility of prisoners receiving most, if not all, of their entitlement at the start of a 14-day period, and receiving almost no time throughout the rest of the fortnight. They also recommended amending the definition of the “meaningful human contact” to capture the possibility that meaningful contact can happen incidentally. The circumstances around individual exchanges do not necessarily make them no less meaningful. I also welcome the committee’s recommendation to remove the provision specifying the desirability of providing prisoners with more meaningful human contact, providing there is a mix of different kinds of meaningful human contact. These are better expressed in operational policy than legislation.

Over the past year, Corrections has reviewed compliance across the prison network, with the prisoner’s right to at least an hour of physical exercise each day. Corrections has made significant progress in improving access to the entitlement across the estate, with greater consistency and decision making, and considerably more monitoring and oversight arrangements at a national level.

However, based on this work, it has become clear that changes need to made to the legislative framework for physical exercise. Following the Justice Committee’s careful consideration, the bill now introduces new grounds and safeguards for situations where a prisoner’s exercise entitlement can be denied. Only a prison manager, or another suitable responsible person, can deny the daily exercise entitlement for a prisoner, and this can be no longer than two consecutive days. The exception is if a prisoner is awaiting a health medical assessment or treatment. In addition, the exceptions must be recorded in order to facilitate national monitoring and analysis. The changes to the provisions also clarify when exercise can be denied. This includes where there is current or real risk to prison security, or the health or safety of any person, including unit search operations, and when a prisoner is being transferred between prisons.

This bill responds to the evolving risk within our prison system, while maintaining appropriate safeguards and protection for prisoners. It strengthens the safety of Corrections staff, other prisoners, and the wider public, and supports the Government’s commitment to restoring law and order. I look forward to us debating the bill in more detail during the committee of the whole House. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tom Rutherford): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We’re kind of uncomfortable with this bill, to be perfectly honest, but we will support it. We see what it’s trying to achieve, but as members who sat through the select committee will know, we don’t think it really goes far enough. And I guess our concern is that it doesn’t provide for appropriate minimum standards for prisoners. It improves their current conditions, but it doesn’t go far enough. But in doing that, it then legitimises falling short. So that’s our concern with it. When we were looking at this bill and whether we should support it or not, we were torn betwixt and between. But ultimately, we thought it’s better than doing nothing. Doing selfies in the Chamber is not normal, Mr Fleming.

I think we need to face up to the fact that the reason that this bill is before us, is because the Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit was visited by the Ombudsman, who gave it a quite damning review. The Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit was, essentially, set up for the mosque terrorist. One of the concerns, and one of the reasons we support—particularly the tests for who enters that unit—is that it appears to be filled up with prisoners who Corrections would like out of the normal system. If they’re prisoners of extreme risk, then yes. So, if they’re prisoners who are extremely violent—this is a small number of prisoners, but they’re out there—and who take an inordinate amount of management to keep other prisoners and Corrections staff safe; or if they are genuine extremists, and they are preaching their horrid lies to other prisoners and, essentially, recruiting extremism, I get that.

But I think we’ve got to be cautious that we don’t use this unit, the Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit, in a way, by designating these prisoners simply to put away those prisoners who are difficult to manage because they know how to game the system. They know how to recruit fellow prisoners to be on their side, and to do them favours and all of those things that we know happens in prison.

I think there is a sense that we do need to be cautious about this, because let’s just recognise how difficult the conditions here are. These are prisoners who are pretty much all isolated from each other. And when you say “meaningful human contact”, 10 hours every two weeks in any given seven days, “meaningful” can be as meaningful as an hour with a prison guard, not with family or someone doing meaningful interactions. It can just be pretty banal, with someone who you don’t have a relationship with, they’re your prison keeper. So let’s be very cautious about the people we put here.

To be fair, and the committee worked hard on this, and I think we did a pretty good job when we said a couple of things. One was that we clarified the kind of prisoners, or the risk, where there was an extreme risk, and that’s important—extreme—risk to public safety, the safety of prisoners, the safety of staff or employees, or visitors—or prison safety or security. So it’s actually up there.

And then the other test was that they have to be guilty of a very serious offence. Originally it was kind of a relatively loose test, but we clarified that to include serious drug offences, serious money-laundering offences, and so on. And that’s in new section 52D. So we did do some good work there.

I do want to, however, express disappointment around the exercise rules, because, again, the Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit rules were in response to an Ombudsman’s report—a damning Ombudsman’s report—and then, all of a sudden, and it’s at the last minute, after submissions had closed, when the departmental report landed—so that’s weeks from when we had to report back—out of nowhere, in the departmental report, there’s these provisions that no one had discussed, about exercise, and the grounds upon which exercise rights could be limited. I was really disappointed that such an important thing hadn’t been traversed or put to submitters. And that was in response to a court case, which actually ordered Corrections to give an hour’s exercise a day to prisoners, which they hadn’t been giving.

I do not agree with the Minister and his officials on this, who say that these are rights extending. The law already says that you can stop exercise where it’s necessary for prison security or safety. What this does is it extends out those grounds by further describing what that might be, including things like conducting a search. Now, conducting a search may be about prison safety, or it may just be about finding a packet of cigarettes, right? So we’ve got to be really cautious there. I was very disappointed in that, and also in terms of defining what exercise is.

Not every New Zealand citizen gets to visit a prison—some do, who don’t choose to do that; others, like MPs, get to have a look, and are allowed to go and ask to see any bit of a prison they like, and I encourage you to do that. I have gone and looked at some prisons, and some of those exercise yards which are adjacent to a cell are not very large at all. They are about 6 or 8 square metres. You couldn’t take three large steps in them. So that’s the area for exercise. In terms of it being outdoors, some of these so-called exercise yards have walls which are 8 feet high, with roofs on them, and a little gap of about a metre, often covered in wire, and that’s considered an outdoor exercise area. You can barely see the sky.

I understand that some people think that, well, they’ve done bad things, but if we want them to come out of this place better than they went in, we’ve got to give them humane conditions. So saying that you’re getting exercise when you’re being put into another concrete box that just so happens to have a little bit of fresh air circulating is a little problematic for me.

As I’ve said, those are only some of the concerns that we have with this bill. One of the challenges is that we’ve got the Mandela Rules, better known as the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, and we’re not compliant with them. This is a convention to which we have signed up and the rules are referenced in the Corrections Act itself. We have agreed to comply with them, and yet time and again we fall short and, essentially, we say that, operationally, we need to do it this way. Now, I appreciate corrections staff, I appreciate the work that they do and all of the risks they put themselves into, and by far and away, the vast majority of them are working hard to make other people’s lives better, but we do need to put the resources into our corrections system to make sure that these minimum standards—internationally recognised standards—are met. This piece of legislation gets us closer to them, but it doesn’t get it there. That’s why we are reluctant in our support.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just on the last point that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb said in terms of the resources for the Department of Corrections, I disagree. I think that Corrections have pretty healthy appropriations and I think they actually do get a lot of money. I think the problem with Corrections is that there are people who are in there for non-serious, non-violent crimes and that could be managed in another way that isn’t as expensive as putting someone into custody.

I don’t think it’s necessarily the resources, but it’s the priority of who needs to be held in custody, which is, essentially, what this bill is about. It is obviously addressing the most high-risk people in this country, and I’ve actually been to visit the Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit (PERU) as part of my visit to Auckland Prison. I was accompanied there by the prison manager, Stephen Parr, and probably about 10 big guards. It was quite scary. It was the first prison I had ever set foot in and it was pretty terrifying, to be honest with you, especially going straight into PERU, because it has been designed for even higher than maximum security, and, as we all know, it was designed for one purpose, which has been well canvassed in the first reading of this bill.

We supported this bill going to select committee because we were supportive of the concept of legislating minimum entitlements for people within the PERU for many reasons, but particularly because there was the report by the Ombudsman in 2024 which outlined some of the concerns that that office had around there not being sufficient safeguards in place to make sure that the minimum entitlements in line with the Mandela Rules were being implemented within the PERU. We supported the bill to the Justice Committee, and throughout the select committee process there was a lot of work that went into this bill from the committee, from the officials, and from the advisers and the chair, who were really trying to address some of the concerns held around the table.

Ultimately, where we’ve landed today, to cut a long story short—but I will be taking my full call—we can no longer support the bill, because it hasn’t met the threshold of what we would have liked to see.

💬 Ryan Hamilton: Defund the police.

However—however—however, Ryan Hamilton—

💬 Ryan Hamilton: Defund the police.

Oh, the Government is doing a good job of defunding the police, actually. Have a look at your Budget. Have a look at the Budget. We actually made a graph of police funding, and you’ve reduced it, which is so ironic.

💬 Ryan Hamilton: What about outcomes?

Anyway—and didn’t you miss the 500 extra police officers, as well? Ha, ha!

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tom Rutherford): I didn’t.

Oh, sorry, Mr Speaker. I’ll get back on topic.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Tom Rutherford): I didn’t miss it.

Oh, he didn’t miss it; the Government did—that’s right. Thanks for fact-checking that one, Mr Speaker. Anyway, back to the bill.

However, because we are pragmatic people, we have brought in these 10 tabled amendments which address our concerns. So after this, we have got a riveting committee of the whole House stage, which we are looking forward to, and if we can manage to pass these, then we will change our stance on this bill to support it, because these amendments are not out the gate. We can do out-the-gate ones, but these ones are, basically, about bringing this bill into alignment with the Mandela Rules, and that was a significant point of contention within the select committee.

What this bill does is that it does fulfil the Mandela Rules in respect to prolonged solitary confinement—which has a very specific definition—which is that it’s fitting that those entitlements are met and legislated for, because if anyone in this room has read the Ombudsman’s report into the PERU, they would see that in one of the worst case scenarios in the PERU, there was an individual who spent 900 days in prolonged solitary confinement. Regardless of what anyone might think about criminals, and particularly the worst of the worst, at the end of the day, we do not have capital punishment in this country, which means that people still have human rights. There’s a good quote out there that I’m too tired to recall correctly, but how a society treats the worst person in their society is a reflection of how they are, and human rights exist for every person that is a human being, regardless of what they have done in their life. We’ve got these amendments that might bring the bill up to standard, and then we will be able to change our stance.

What this process really showed me was that it is justified to have deep concerns about Corrections. Corrections have been—how do we say this? It’s hard to think of kind ways of putting things when you’re really tired, but they have failed in many respects. At the time, the Chief Executive of Corrections, Jeremy Lightfoot—I know that he’s now at the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport—was actually called before the High Court in December last year and was issued with a mandamus order, which is, one, unprecedented but, two, it is a court telling a chief executive of a Government department that they need to abide by their governing legislation, or their rules. The reason that the chief executive was summoned to the High Court was because Corrections was not meeting minimum entitlements, and this is for just your stock standard prisoners; this is not even in relation to those in the PERU.

It is unprecedented that a Public Service chief executive is told that they need to follow their own law, and so already we had deep concerns about Corrections and their inability to provide for people’s minimum entitlements. We gave them a bit of grace during COVID-19 and the lockdown—well, I didn’t, because I wasn’t in here. But they were afforded grace because of the circumstances of that particular time for their trying to manage the spread of an infectious disease. However, now that we’re well out of COVID, there really are no excuses for Corrections not being able to meet their minimum entitlements, which was really the rationale behind our original support for this bill.

We felt that if we legislated for those minimum entitlements for these prisoners in the PERU, it might be a tool by which Corrections might be held accountable.

However, what we found in the process is that the minimum entitlements don’t go far enough to meet the Mandela Rules. But, also, we were really disappointed that it almost felt like, in some circumstances, the advisors were trying to write this bill in a way that makes the status quo meet a new set of minimum entitlements by creative accounting, almost, creative definitions of the interpretation of an exercise yard or how much time people have access to daylight or things like ventilation. We just felt that it wasn’t a genuine attempt to try and embed really important minimum standards, but rather it was an attempt to try and minimise the legal risk to—and human rights in the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) monitoring risk to Corrections by making a bill that really embeds the status quo.

We have another concern, which we’ll canvass more through the committee of the whole House stage, and that is that the Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit (PERU) was designed with one person in particular in mind, and this is a heinous individual that we shall not name. However, now PERU has captured a whole range of other people, people who have been, admittedly, extremely violent, but also people who have very large influence in terms of organised crime and their presence or influence within those spaces. We don’t think that this is what PERU was designed for. We think that PERU was designed for an exceptional, unprecedented, extraordinary situation and that it is now being used as a tool to capture others that don’t fall within that remit, who would otherwise be in the maximum security unit. That includes people who are on remand as well. So we just feel like it’s been created and now it is becoming a catch-all.

Anyway, we look forward to spending the last hour and 20 minutes of this evening in committee of the whole House to traverse these issues, and we will change to support if we get support for our amendments. So pick up a copy and have a read.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill. One of the key duties, actually, of a Government is to protect its citizens. It’s unfortunate that in society we, sadly, have some people who actually pose an extreme risk to fellow citizens, but, also, even once they’re incarcerated, they actually pose an extreme risk to other prisoners and staff. These prisoners, some of them, as it’s been outlined this evening, are housed in the Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit, but there are also others.

I want to thank the Justice Committee, and my fellow MPs on the select committee. We did actually work through this diligently, and despite what we might have heard from across the House, the other members, even in Opposition, actually did work through the issues. This bill actually does put in place, for the first time, these designated management prisoners. So it actually provides a framework to manage these prisoners, which actually protects their rights but also allows Corrections to understand their powers and duties. So obviously we’re going to talk about this in a lot more detail, but it is actually an important piece of legislation, which, as I said, for the first time will actually give Corrections a proper framework to deal with these extreme risk prisoners. So I am commending it to the House.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill. I recall, when I spoke on the first reading of this legislation, applauding Camilla Belich’s contribution on this bill, recognising that this was going to be a difficult piece of legislation with complexities to navigate. So, therefore, I fully recognise the great work of the Justice Committee to bring it back to the House, having fully traversed the issues identified in it.

This is an important piece of legislation. It addresses some dangerous risk loopholes in our prison system. New Zealand First has always, and will always, advocate for our front-line workers. This provides a positive framework for the front-line prison officers as well. It is a useful and important piece of legislation, and we commend it to the House.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to take a split call on the Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill. For those people that are actually watching us from home, it is a Saturday night, but in the way that we run time here in Parliament, it is actually Tuesday because we’re under urgency. I know that Dan Rosewarne in particular would have would have preferred to be out there with his cars, but here we are on Saturday night discussing these bills.

Just to support some of the comments that have been said around the House, in particular from my colleague Tamatha Paul, who has indicated that we do have tabled amendments on the Table which would move this bill in a way that aligns with the Mandela Rules. So people that are listening, tuning in, we are talking about the Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill, but it is focusing on prisoners of extreme risk and those people that are within the Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit. That particular designation was actually targeted to one specific individual, an individual who is infamous in the history of New Zealand. I won’t name that person. But one of our concerns, amongst a number of concerns, is that this will actually capture a lot of other people.

The way that we go about making sure that it doesn’t capture a whole lot of other people—because once you set up a designation, then it becomes easier to capture other people—is actually to move it in line with the international commitments that we have signed up to. This is the reference to the Mandela Rules. As I was quickly learning about the Mandela Rules, on the preface, on the website of the United Nations, it actually begins with a quote from Nelson Mandela. He said that “no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” So words of wisdom there from Nelson Mandela himself.

There are a number of different principles which guided the Mandela Rules: treating people with dignity, etc. But one of them focused on ensuring that there wasn’t prolonged solitary confinement, which brings us to what this bill is trying to do.

One of the points that was raised, I think, by the Hon Dr Duncan Webb was around meaningful contact. We know that if you’ve got somebody in solitary confinement, to leave them there without being able to connect with people is in many ways a form of extreme punishment, torture even. So, one of the amendments that Tamatha Paul has tabled—and I would invite members across the House to pick this amendment up—is to replace that, because one of the points that actually was raised is as the bill references “meaningful human contact”, that shouldn’t include like passive context. So if a prisoner goes out and they see a prison guard, that might, under the definition as it is currently drafted, qualify as “meaningful human contact”—or being surveilled or being able to take telephone calls, etc., etc., etc. So this particular tabled amendment would take away that. It would provide a lot more clarity around proper, meaningful human contact. So I would invite members to take a look at that tabled amendment.

I was interested to hear that the Justice Committee had some new information dumped on them in the departmental report, which wasn’t actually included in part of the submissions. That was around the possible limitations to exercise. As we all know, as we should know, particularly here in Parliament, we get stuck inside a lot, being able to exercise is a way to improve one’s wellbeing; it helps with rehabilitation as well. So I hope that the Minister of Corrections has done some thinking about why that was included in the departmental report late, by the sounds of it, and the different things that could be done in terms of amendments to make sure that that is also afforded to these individuals.

My sense is it is moving in the right direction, but, of course, it is best to do things once and do them properly. This bill has got a lot more work to do. We do have some tabled amendments which would move it significantly in line with the Mandela Rules, and I encourage members across the House to support these amendments.

We commend this bill. There was extensive korero during the select committee process, and it’s really interesting, because it’s sad to hear that it’s not commended by the Green Party, when, really, this is doing what they dream of—giving prisoners more rights. But again and again, over and over, it astounds me how much the Labour Party and the Greens go to great extreme lengths to stand up for the rights of those who have caused some of the most grievous harm in our communities—very sad but true.

I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Yet again we hear more misinformation from the member Rima Nakhle opposite. I don’t think she heard our first speaker indicate that we were supporting this bill at its second reading, but, then again, I guess that at this late stage in the day or the evening that member would rather guess—

💬 Rima Nakhle: Truth hurts.

Yes, the truth does hurt, and you’ll find that out in November. That’s what’s going to happen.

As has already been indicated, the Labour Party will be supporting this bill at its second reading this evening.

💬 Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Listen up, Rima, you need to hear this.

I will say it again: the Labour Party will be supporting this bill at its second reading.

I want to start by acknowledging the work of the Justice Committee. I think that everyone in this Parliament knows that I’m not a member of the Justice Committee, but it does appear to be a committee that has a lot on its plate in terms of this Parliament. I didn’t hear any of the submissions, but I understand that there were more than 50 of them and a number of organisations and individuals were able to speak to their submissions as well.

What I am told, though, through the select committee’s report is that there were a number of themes, but the one that sticks out for me is that there is no argument, really, that the Department of Corrections need to have the tools and the ability to not just manage some of our country’s most difficult offenders but be able to do that in a safe way. When I talk about a safe way, I mean safe for the staff that are in our facilities all around the country, and I note that the unit we’re referring to here in the select committee is based in Auckland Prison. But the work that Corrections staff do tirelessly every day, every hour, every minute does need to be acknowledged.

The interesting thing, of course, is that there is a requirement and an expectation—some would say an obligation—for that safety to also extend to the prisoners. I think that internationally that is certainly an expectation that is well held and well understood. We are none the less talking about a relatively small group of prisoners who have been assessed as being an extreme risk. So it is important to note the number of prisoners that we are referring to in this bill is, by and large, a relatively small, but the implications in terms of the operations of the department are such that, naturally, there is a conversation that needs to be had around the appropriateness of how far that would extend into other parts of the corrections life.

I say that because we are talking about the way in which operations happen or may not happen, and even though we’re talking about a small group of prisoners here, there are implications in terms of resourcing. There are implications in terms of some of the operational policies that would be put in place, and at the end of the day, given whatever the resourcing pot might be, there will be implications across the entire corrections sector as a result of making some of these decisions.

The select committee identifies in terms of the report the fact that there is a reference in there—I think it’s in the Greens’ view in there as well—to the role of the Ombudsman, and that was relatively clear in terms of the real risk that the Ombudsman was able to identify in terms of where New Zealand sits aligned with international approaches and international practices, and the possibility that operations become the new norm in terms of what some of those international standards might be.

I understand that the Justice Committee heard similar kinds of arguments or submissions from other submitters as well. A lot of them relate to that kind of desire to adhere or align to international standards in terms of the way in which prisons operate and function here in New Zealand.

Now, my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb mentioned the fact that members of Parliament have a statutory opportunity to visit any prison in New Zealand. That’s in legislation, and it provides the opportunity for any member of this House to visit facilities all around the country to check on a few things, one of which is the conditions that prisoners are held in. The other is the alleged treatment of prisoners who are incarcerated. I have not been in a prison under that particular opportunity as a member of Parliament. I have not exercised that statutory opportunity, but prisons have not been unfamiliar to me.

Prior to entering this House I spent just over five years as a visiting justice in prisons in New Zealand, undertaking disciplinary hearings over a whole manner of things. So while I haven’t taken up that statutory opportunity to visit prisons as a member of Parliament, I have taken up the statutory opportunity to visit as a visiting justice. These are individuals who are appointed by the Government of the day, who, effectively, have to be either of two things. They have to be a lawyer or a Justice of the Peace, and there are a handful of these folk who every week of the year go into our prisons and undertake independent disciplinary hearings. This is relevant to this bill, Madam Speaker, because one of the questions that clearly comes through some of this conversation and the submission process is the role of independents. For a number of these issues in terms of decisions being made, is it appropriate that the chief executive of the department is making some decisions?

Naturally, the chief executive needs to make decisions but when it concerns the operation of their prison, when it concerns the possible implications and impact on how much exercise a prisoner might be able to undertake, or the level of human contact that someone might have over the course of a 24-hour period or, indeed, a week, or whatever it might be, there is an issue for consideration—and we want to tease this out during the committee stage—around whether it’s appropriate for that decision-making capacity to sit with, effectively, a member of the Public Service or whether it would sit more comfortably with, perhaps, independent individuals such as visiting justices.

Visiting justices do have the statutory right to place someone into solitary confinement for a period of up to 14 or 15 days. I know that because I did it. These are individuals who absolutely need to understand what the impacts are of solitary confinement, what it means in terms of prisoners’ ability or inability to have human contact, to be able to contact members of the family, to have access to privileges, and to lose privileges. In some instances, the maximum capacity there is up to 90 days’ loss of privileges. We are talking about privileges that other prisoners have as of right.

When I started in that role there was a requirement that if a prisoner had been in mechanical constraints for a period that exceeded 24 hours, that had to be notified to a local visiting justice within a timeframe. Why? So that that independent statutory appointee could consider whether that was appropriate or whether they thought there needed to be, not an investigation or anything, but some oversight over that.

There are already existing avenues within corrections where there are appropriately trained and appropriately appointed people who could play a role in terms of some of the issues that, clearly, have been identified by the Ombudsman and by some of the agencies that have been identified as submitters through this process. Also, there is the opportunity for folk who are familiar with what that might look like.

I don’t think we can underestimate the impact that some of these restrictions will have on an individual. Now, I am by no means suggesting that the behaviour that has led these individuals to be subject to these restrictions should be condoned. It should not. There is a reason why these individuals are in a facility in New Zealand, having gone through the independent judicial process. But there is a responsibility of this Parliament to consider who is appropriate to be making these decisions and where the statutory threshold may lie.

We do look forward to entertaining some of those potential changes through the committee stage. Having said that, we come to this bill with our support for it at this stage, but, naturally, we would look at what that looked like when it emerged from the committee of the whole House to see where things would land, but for now we commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker, National is committed to safe communities throughout New Zealand, but along with that, we’ve got to make sure that we look after, and care for, our prison population appropriately. Along with the fantastic member for Rangitīkei, I visited one of our local prisons recently. This bill will continue to support the framework around the management of our prisoners across New Zealand, so I commend the bill to the House.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Hon Dr Deborah Russell—this is a split call.

Madam Speaker, I think I first visited a prison, actually, as a teenager. Part of the local drama class on Friday nights in New Plymouth, and we’d done a play about a person who was unjustly imprisoned, and we took it to the local prison in New Plymouth, which was quite the experience there. I don’t know if that prison’s still in use, actually. It has—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, it’s not.

—very solid, thick walls, and it’s quite a daunting place. I don’t think I went inside a prison again until a few years ago as a member of Parliament—Wiri Prison—which is nothing like as scary looking as the old prison in New Plymouth, but it’s still a very daunting place, going in there through screenings and walls and understanding that the people who are in that prison can go nowhere else. That’s where they are. We have imprisoned them as a punishment, and their punishment is loss of freedom. That’s what we do in liberal democracies. We don’t engage in hard labour or in physical punishment. The punishment we hand out is loss of freedom.

It makes it quite important when we restrict prisoners in ways that entail more than the loss of freedom. We find this bill difficult on this side of the House, but we are voting for it, because alongside that sort of thinking around the loss of freedom is the need to recognise that some people are very dangerous and that some people—I hate saying these words—are not fit to mix with other people on a daily basis, because they impose such a physical danger to other people, yet we are charging ourselves with keeping these people safe. That’s the duty we give ourselves as a liberal democracy—that if we imprison people and take their freedom away from them, we keep them safe. What this bill is attempting to do is to find ways of keeping people who are very risky and who do pose a real danger safe from each other but also keeping them safe from the brutalisation that can occur in prisons. Some of those famous Stanford prison experiments are contested. Nevertheless, we know that if someone is in a person’s power, it can be so easy to mistreat that person.

Even though these are bad people, we must not mistreat them, because that reflects on us and what sort of people we think we are—that we would mistreat another human being. We do need to find a balance and find a way through these difficulties. These are not good people. Nevertheless, we must keep them safe, and this bill is an attempt to do that. There are some real difficulties in it, which we need to discuss at the committee stage, but there is one thing I am quite concerned about, looking at new section 52D and looking at why a person may be taken to pose an extreme risk. It is someone who may be “radicalising, or recruiting to an ideology, another person,”. Gosh, that’s a risky idea to have in a liberal democracy. We know what sorts of ideologies we are talking about, but it is all too easy to demonise another person’s ideas—to say that their thinking is wrong or their ideology is wrong. We might have laws to lock up local gang members, but, all too often, those laws might apply to the local embroiderers’ guild as well. So there’s a real difficulty in that phrasing. I understand what we’re trying to get at, but it’s difficult. I think that emphasises just how difficult this bill is and how seriously we must take it.

💬 Miles Anderson: Madam Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is this the real Miles Anderson?

💬 Miles Anderson: I’ll tell you later.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just for the other side of the House, there’s a whole lot of those ties around the building at the moment, so I’m just checking to make sure it’s the real Miles Anderson.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I’m happy to take a call on the Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill. I’d really like to thank the Justice Committee for the work they’ve done on this bill, and I commend the bill to the House.

Actually, I was wondering what those ties were all about. I might just have to have a chat afterwards just to figure out what it’s all about—but, yeah, you’re looking very sharp at this time of night.

When we’re discussing issues like this, you learn a lot about your colleagues, and I was quite impressed with Tangi Utikere’s past experience there as a visiting justice. It’s things like that you learn about your colleagues, and those experiences really round out the caucus, so that’s great. The only experience I’ve really had with visiting a prison was 25 years ago when they went on strike and they sent a whole lot of us young soldiers in there to look after the prisons. That was a bit of an eye-opener as a young soldier, but you make some arrangements—“You make it easy for me; I’ll make it easy for you”—and we didn’t have any issues. It was for a good couple of weeks, but it was a good experience, nevertheless, for a young person to actually see the prison and see how it all operated.

Anyway, Labour supports the bill. We supported it at first reading, we have taken part in the select committee process in good faith, and we acknowledge that there are aspects of this legislation that improve the current situation. The existing arrangement for managing some of the highest-risk prisoners have been subject to significant criticism by both the Ombudsman and the inspectorate. There’s broad agreement that the status quo was unsustainable and that Parliament has a responsibility to provide a clear legal framework where extraordinary powers are being exercised, like in our prisons. It would be fair to say that the role of this House is not simply to approve new powers; it’s to make sure that those powers are necessary, they’re proportionate, workable, and accompanied by the appropriate safeguards that stand the test of time—particularly when those powers affect people who are entirely under the control of the State.

One of the central features of this bill is the creation of the designated-management prisoners, or DMPs, and the bill creates a formal process for identifying prisoners who pose an extreme risk and allows Corrections to manage them under a more restrictive regime. Final designations can last for up to two years and involve restrictions on movement, communications, association, and property. That property piece is one thing that hasn’t actually been discussed too much, and it didn’t really get the scrutiny within the select committee either. Nevertheless, there is merit in having a transparent statutory process. The current arrangements have been criticised for a lack of oversight and clarity. The bill requires notification of prisoners, written reasons for decisions, and it requires opportunities to provide submissions and then also that advisory panel involvement as well. There are also review mechanisms, and those are all improvements.

However, many submitters asked whether the decision-making framework was robust enough for a regime of this significance, and the Law Association actually argued that decisions of this gravity should involve a greater degree of independence, and they questioned whether psychological assessment should play a mandatory role in those designation decisions. They also raised concerns about the breadth of the designation test and whether it extends too far beyond risks that actually arise within prison environments. The New Zealand Law Society made similar points, actually, suggesting that the threshold may be overly broad and recommending greater independence in the advisory process. Those are not arguments that this side of the House dismisses lightly. When Parliament creates a framework that can impose highly restrictive conditions for extended periods, we should be confident that those decisions are based on clear evidence and the appropriate checks and balances.

The other major issue raised throughout the submissions and raised tonight is that the bill creates, for the first time, a statutory requirement for meaningful human contact. That’s an important step forward. We know that prolonged isolation can cause serious psychological harm and we know that maintaining human dignity matters. We know that rehabilitation becomes increasingly difficult when people are disconnected from meaningful social isolation. The Justice Committee strengthened some aspects of the bill by aligning the prohibition on prolonged solitary confinement more closely with the Mandela Rules and by adding requirements around minimum contact over 17- and 14-day periods.

Despite those changes, we do have some concerns. The Law Association argued that the minimum standards remain well below what many international experts consider appropriate. They questioned whether some forms of contact, particularly telephone and those barrier interactions should qualify as meaningful human contact at all. The Law Society expressed similar concerns and warned that redefining internationally recognised concepts risks creating inconsistency between New Zealand law and international standards. Whether the members in the House agree with those views or not, they raise an important question for this House and I look forward to fleshing that out during the committee of the whole House.

If Parliament is creating statutory rights, are we setting the right standard? That’s going to be an important question. The other important question is going to be around those standards. Can they actually be delivered? Rights only exist in practice if there are actually enough trained staff and we have the facilities and the resources to make them happen, essentially. A recurring theme in the submissions was that much of this bill assumes a level of resourcing that from what I’ve seen, doesn’t actually really exist at this point in time. The question of implementation remains, and it’s one that we’ll definitely ask during the committee of the whole House.

I also want to just quickly touch on the evidence provided by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. Their submission added an important clinical perspective to this debate. They supported some of the bill’s objectives, including greater procedural protections and stronger recognition of meaningful human contact, but they warned that the bill created significant new management powers without, like, an equally strong clinical framework, which I found quite interesting. The college argued that behaviours interpreted as extreme risk can sometimes arise from untreated mental illnesses and things like intellectual disability, neurodivergence, trauma, or addiction-related conditions. They were concerned that the designation framework focuses heavily on behaviour while placing insufficient emphasis on understanding and addressing those underlying causes. I found that submission particularly interesting.

They also raised concerns around young people in custody and trauma-informed practice, things like alcohol and drug withdrawal as well, and the availability of rehabilitation pathways for those designated management prisoners. Now, Labour accepts that prisons must be able to manage genuine risks. Public safety absolutely matters but so does staff safety and then also prisoner safety. We look forward to fleshing those out during the committee of the whole House. Thank you.

💬 Ingrid Leary: Point of order. I was just finding it really difficult to hear my colleague Dan Rosewarne speaking because of noise coming from the other side of the House, so I’m just asking if, when members are speaking, we can have the courtesy of allowing them to speak, because it is quite distracting.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, look, thank you for that, but I have to say there was a point about 20 minutes ago where I was actually going to rark the other side of the House up. I didn’t particularly notice it at this stage, but it is—yeah, I didn’t notice it on that occasion, but obviously the member was concerned.

💬 Ingrid Leary: Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I wasn’t in the House at that point, but I found it difficult to hear my colleague and I’m sitting directly in front of him, so I just thought it must have been—also it’s quite difficult when we’re speaking in the House if there’s distraction around us.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, I get that. I just hadn’t noticed it at that particular point.

Oh, thanks, Madam Speaker. It’s great to speak on virtually the last call of this, the second reading. I’d just like to acknowledge the Minister of Corrections and his work in this space, and the Justice Committee, which is certainly the busiest committee this term, with over 50 pieces of legislation. I acknowledge the previous chair, James Meager, the Hon Andrew Bayly, and, of course, Tom Rutherford. I certainly commend this bill to the House and recommend the next speaker be Suze Redmayne.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I’m glad we live in a country where we have good, chunky conversations about things like incarceration because, sadly, it is necessary. It is necessary to detain people and to punish people, but also to protect the public from some of those offenders, but also, as this bill talks about, to protect the staff who are responsible for managing the day-to-day comings and goings of inmates in our prison system.

Now, in my family, I have a family member who is actually about to retire from the Department of Corrections on Labour weekend after doing 51 years—51 years with the Department of Corrections; as long as I’ve been alive. It has been interesting to hear stories that they have told of their experiences—everything from, you would know, Madam Chair, the minimum security of Ōhura Prison back in the day, where the fence was sort of rather low and they’d be out in the community mowing the lawns and doing all sorts of stuff, through to Pāremoremo and the maximum security space. Many stories have been told, and as I listen around the House and I hear the thoughtful debate, this is something—like I say, I’m glad that we can discuss these things as a country, because unfortunately we need prisons. We need to protect the public but we also need to protect other inmates and also the staff that manage those spaces.

As I’ve been listening, and I wasn’t part of the Justice Committee, but I was really curious about the Mandela Rules, and so I looked them up, as any person would, to understand them. I think it was the National Party, actually, that originally signed us up to those rules when it came through the United Nations. It’s sobering reading, and, again, we understand that you do the crime, you do the time; we understand that people do need to be punished and removed from society when they hurt and harm others; but the Mandela Rules, I think, are significant for us as we continue to progress this bill, as we cautiously consider amendments through the committee of the whole House stage, and what it can look like.

The Mandela Rules talk about human dignity—yes, in some way we have to respect human life; around non-discrimination, which, again, is a pillar of a modern liberal democracy; around healthcare, which, again, we provide within our prison service here in Aotearoa; and then the purpose of imprisonment, which I thought was really interesting because it talked about the focus on safety and security, obviously, for the public, but also for those who are incarcerated with others. But it then talked about rehabilitation and preparation to be released and become law-abiding citizens, which should always be our hope, that, yes, these people have done bad things and we should always err on the side of victims, but we should also do our best to ensure we have less victims if we did it right through the prison system and actually did rehabilitation

But the last one, which has been traversed a number of times, but I just wanted to reflect on it briefly from my experiences around that solitary confinement. This is a piece in this legislation which is contentious, which is hard, and in the Mandela Rules, it talks about isolation for 22 hours or more daily without meaningful human contact. Then it talks about prolonged solitary confinement exceeding 15 consecutive days, which is strictly banned, and some of the numbers in this legislation are a challenge.

Just in closing on that solitary confinement—but also just on the fact that I’ve spent a lot of time in prisons and have a fair understanding of it—I remember, as a youth worker in the 1990s here in Wellington, being called up by Mount Crawford prison, which was still open at the time, and they asked me to visit a teenager in there every fortnight. This teenager had no family connection, had no sort of person, no one to phone or to talk to, and even though they’re in a minimum security wing of Mount Crawford prison, Corrections had real concerns because of their disconnection, and because of the fact that they did feel confined even though they were in minimum security, but it was that human meaningful connection which we need to make sure that we uphold.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Justice Committee by majority be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 88

New Zealand National 48; New Zealand Labour 21; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 9

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: This bill is set down for committee stage immediately.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill

Committee of the whole House

Part 1 Amendments to Corrections Act 2004, and Schedules 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Tom Rutherford): Members, the House is in committee on the Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill. We come first to Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 3 to 25, “Amendments to Corrections Act 2004”, and Schedules 1 and 2. The question is that Part 1 stand part.