Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill

SUE KEDGLEY Link to this

Will there be submissions on this? [ Interruption] There are not going to be any submissions. This is extraordinary. This bill will significantly affect hundreds, possibly thousands, of New Zealanders. They will wake up and discover that their local court down the road is now a jail, and they will not be consulted or informed about that. This reminds me of the national environment standard on telecommunications that was rammed through Parliament last year. It allows cell antennae, masts, and so on to be erected on any telephone pole anywhere in New Zealand. Mr Mallard rammed that one through. The Greens predicted in this House that it would cause outrage round New Zealand when it went through, when people discovered that cell antennae and masts could be erected anywhere in New Zealand without their knowledge or consent, even though they could affect their health and well-being and their property prices—their property prices could plunge by up to 20 percent. Have we been proven to be correct? Yes. All around New Zealand, groups are outraged. Every week someone else contacts me. Last week a guy in Invercargill discovered that a 15-metre high cell tower was about to be erected across the road. It is a 6-storey tower and no one had bothered to inform or consult him. I was speaking to a woman from Christchurch yesterday. When she took her daughter to school there was no cell tower; when she came home at 3 o’clock to pick her daughter up, there was a cell tower across the road from the school. Is this the sort of New Zealand that we think is acceptable? There is growing literature about the health effects of cell towers. In fact, places like France are taking down cell towers near schools, and here we are putting them up without anyone’s knowledge or consent.

This bill does exactly the same thing. New Zealanders will be gazumped by this measure. They will ask: “How did this happen? How come we have prisoners in our courthouse? Nobody told us about it?”.

SUE KEDGLEY Link to this

It is not bad planning. The Government has rammed it through deliberately. Do not put it down to bad planning! How can such a bill not have gone to a select committee? It is about an issue of vital importance to New Zealand. We are converting our court cells into jails, and nobody is allowed to make a submission. Nobody will be consulted on it. Nobody will even be told of this measure. Someone will wake up, go to a courthouse somewhere in a suburb, and suddenly discover that it is a jail.

Would someone please explain how this measure will work? I see that we now have a Minister in the chair, the Acting Minister of Corrections. I ask the Minister to please explain to the Committee where the prison guards who guard these court cells will be. Where will food be prepared for the prisoners? Where will they take their showers? Where will they have their exercise? What about the people who should be in the court cells; where will they be held? Will there be caravans outside our courthouses around New Zealand to serve as court cells? And why will the Government not deal with the root causes of crime, instead of allowing more and more prisoners, overflowing jails, and the second-highest prisoner population in the world? How much is this measure going to cost us? It costs $70,000 every year for every single prisoner that we lock up in jails or, now, court cells.

This bill is an absolute travesty. The Green Party will be opposing it. We expect answers to every single question that I asked.

Hon MITA RIRINUI Link to this

They were at his meetings. They ate his food. They drank his coffee. I think we can accept the usual flip-flop behaviour by the National-led Government, but, once again, I really, really wonder why the Māori Party has come here today to be present in the Chamber. I am sure that its constituents are waiting with bated breath to hear why the Māori Party supported not only the previous bill but also this bill.

CARMEL SEPULONI Link to this

It is standard practice. The Government refers to the country when it was under Labour as the nanny State, yet it has pushed through a number of bills that have had no public scrutiny whatsoever because it thinks it knows what is right for all New Zealanders. It thinks New Zealanders do not need to have a say on anything. That is what we call a real nanny State.

Some of the issues that have arisen across the course of the debate have been with regards to security officer numbers and their shortage in our prisons. That has been pointed out in a number of different articles in the New Zealand Herald and in various other sources. I ask what the Minister will do with regard to recruiting a higher level of security officers. Has she increased the budget for security officers in courts so they can cater to the needs of these prisoners; if so, how much did she increase the budget to? We would like to know how much the Government is anticipating it will need.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU Link to this

I tell the member I am coming to that. It is not new that we have people in these cells. It is not something new or different that we have never before catered for. As is done anyway with prisoners on remand, accommodation is made to have them showered. They are taken to nearby prisons. Part of the implementation of this is that they do need to be showered and fed, but those things are done anyway.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU Link to this

No, we are not soft on crims—not at all. But we do want to make sure that we can house the prison population properly. Issues such as how they will be housed and how they will be fed are interesting to raise but if that member thinks about it, we have to do that anyway. People already use those cells, just not in relation to using them as prisons. The issue about—

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU Link to this

—no, no—double-bunking and triple-bunking is, I think, a red herring. There is no intention for that to occur in the cells. For a minute one could let the imagination run wild with this; I do not know where triple-bunking came from and I do not know how it would arise, anyway. I do not think it is worth spending much more time on.

As I said, corrections brings food into cells because the people who are locked in those cells have to be fed. Exercise will be on site if possible, but more likely they will be returned to the prison for that and for showering. During the day, court proceedings will take precedence, and prisoners will be returned, depending on whether there is enough room in the cells, either to the cells or to the prison.

The real reason I wanted to stand up was to address the issue that I believe was raised by the member Sue Kedgley regarding human rights implications. It is proper that that is raised. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights affirm the right of every person deprived of liberty to be treated with humanity and respect. The Act and the Corrections Regulations 2005 provide for prisoners held in New Zealand prisons to be treated in a manner that complies with these international instruments, and it is consistent with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

Among other things, this legislation sets out prisoners’ minimum entitlements, requires certain categories of prisoners to be separated—for example youth or unconvicted remand prisoners—and provides access to inspectors of corrections and other complaint mechanisms. All requirements of the Act and regulations will apply to prisoners who are detained in court cells, and these requirements will be met. The proposal to limit the period of detention in court cells to a maximum of 4 days will assist in that regard. Depending on their implementation, because everything is in the implementation, the proposals in this bill appear to be consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We have not ignored it, and I believe that goes some way to addressing the concerns raised in particular by the honourable member Sue Kedgley.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this

Well, we do not have triple-bunking outside the cells; we have triple-bunking inside the cells in our prisons. Also, if we can make that leap of faith and if there is an overflow, because there is no reference to it in here, there is no guarantee in the legislation to say there will be one prisoner per cell or two prisoners per cell in a court holding cell. If the Minister is giving us that commitment, I would be grateful if she could reiterate that it is one prisoner per cell. The reason I raise this is that it raises security issues for prison officers. There are a whole series of issues—food, transportation, staff security, and sanitation—that the Minister did not address. The questions we raised were where, how much, where the money was coming from, how many staff would be needed, would it be the case that in order to access sanitation facilities—

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this

I am sorry?

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this

It is repetitive for those who are sharing the family brain cell. They are legitimate questions that we should ask. I know that that member, who is the chair of the Law and Order Committee, has not taken a call and did not advocate to have this legislation before a select committee, and now she does not want any questions raised.

The reason why it is repetitive, I say to Ms Goudie, is that we have not had the answers. The Minister has been generous enough, I admit, to address a number of points but the reason we are raising questions is that we cannot do it in a select committee. We can do it only in this forum. If we want to earn our pay, our job here is to ask the questions and to test the validity of the legislation. That might be a bit beyond that genius over there, as she squawks away and has a go at us for doing our job.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this

I make no comment on that. I ask the Minister—

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this

My colleague says that she is one of National’s brighter members—well, God help us!

I asked the Minister a serious question: if there has to be food, water—and obviously there does—and sanitation, and prisoners will be shipped out, how far will it be? Will it be 50 kilometres, or 100 kilometres to the nearest prison? I suspect it could be. The Minister’s department will require extra salaried staff, extra transportation, and there will be a cost in the downtime of moving people in and out of the courts, day and night. They will have to do that; the courts operate during the day, so prisoners will have to be shipped out during the day, as the Minister said.

This is my question. Nowhere in the Minister’s statement did she address the issue of cost. I assume that the extra costs for staff, security, sanitation, and transportation will be addressed out of the baseline, because there is no new Budget allocation. Of course, the Department of Corrections is before the court at the moment over the whole double-bunking issue. We know from the chief executive, Barry Matthews, that there are military, logistical plans in place if there is a strike and a lockout—he has told us that. These costs are up in the air. I would like the Minister to tell us whether she will give us a guarantee about “one person, one cell” as the issue of the safety of the prison officers then arises.

Will the Minister also address another issue that I think one of my colleagues raised? If something goes wrong, who will be accountable? We know that the Minister of Corrections is very fond of taking credit for anything that is good news, but when something goes wrong it is an operational matter—“go and see those people in the department.” This bill has not had any consultation; Ms Goudie does not like consultation. There has not been any time to look through it and pick apart the logistics. The bill has just five clauses, but it is the implementation that is more important. What will occur in the circumstances I have mentioned? Will this Minister guarantee that her colleague Judith Collins will stand up and be accountable?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD Link to this

I say to Ms Goudie that we have heard nothing about those agreements. Perhaps Ms Goudie has been sleeping. I know she is bored by this discussion, but if she had been following the discussion she also would have raised this question. Perhaps she will raise it in her caucus; perhaps she ought to. Certainly we are not bored by this; it affects people and it affects many in the communities in which we live.

The third point I raise is reasonably serious. The regulatory impact statement states: “it is considered that the option of using court cells for over-flow prisoners needs to be available on an ongoing basis,”. In much of what members opposite have talked about they said that this provision was a temporary thing. But the regulatory impact statement states that it is an ongoing provision; there is nothing short-term about it. We would like it to be clarified whether it will be used for ever or whether it will be used for the short term. We would like the Minister in the chair to address that. Thank you.

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES Link to this

I would like to carry on after being interrupted by the observant member Trevor Mallard. As I said, those safety issues need to be taken care of. There have been several break-outs from court cells. One was through a window and another was through the ceiling. In fact, I think one of my nephews got away from the Waipukurau prison in that way. I think it is important that 18-year-olds continue to be kept separate from older prisoners, even when in a holding period and not in a semi-permanent period.

This measure has to be temporary; it cannot be any longer than that. Given that those things are taken care of, the Māori Party will support this bill but only as a temporary measure. The reality is that by June next year more cells will be needed to incarcerate the many people who are in there now. We are in this situation because prison numbers swelled under the previous Labour Government. Numbers went from about 5,000 in 1996 to 8,400 now. So I am not saying that Labour is at fault for all of that increase, but, quite clearly, that is what happened over that period.

We need to do something about it, and to me the solution is the work that we do in our society. We have to create stable families. We have to put our effort into the community. It is through education and well families that people will turn away from a life of crime. I think we all have to work on that across parties, as well.

I will humour the member Mita Ririnui as to why I supported the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill last night. I gave two speeches—[Interruption] I guess he must have been asleep at that time, but never mind. I supported the bill for a number of reasons. One of them is that a lot of groups want to go into partnership with iwi and have a joint venture, if you like. Now, the number of Māori in the population has not dropped as a percentage, but Māori make up more than 50 percent of the people in jail. What is there now has not worked, so we should try something different, and that measure is an option.

In terms of recidivism, we have some buildings in the pipeline called Whare Oranga Ake, which is basically a rehabilitation institution. It is still a prison; it caters for the last part of an inmate’s lag. Prisoners will put into a programme of therapeutic analysis so they can analyse their own situation. They will be reconnected with the community and with family. They will be trained in an occupation, and so on. They will live in self-care units for four persons. But they will have to earn their way to get into these units.

The good thing about this whare is that if we have a whare for 32 or 36 people, then the majority of the people will not reoffend. So we are actually creating 32 more beds each time there is a roll-over, whereas right now in prisons we are just refilling the beds, sending the inmates out, and then getting them back in again. To me the first emphasis has to be on the rehabilitation of those inmates in jail now and on attacking the recidivism rate. The second emphasis is to look at alternatives to deal with the prisoners in jail now. Over the years the job of prisons has been to just incarcerate, not to rehabilitate at all. Despite brilliant attempts by a lot of people to do a lot of things, the reality is that the prison system as it is now is a “good guy, bad guy” place where they learn a lot of stuff that is not helpful when they get out.

It is very important to me that we break the cycle of recidivism, but it is also important that we do more than just incarcerate people and then send them out. If prisoners cannot make it when they get out and if the support is not there, they re-associate with the former inmates they have known, and sooner or later it is easier for them to go back to jail. A lot of recidivism is deliberate. They find it difficult to make it out there so they commit a crime, knowing that they will ultimately be caught, and they go back into prison. I have been there when prisoners have been readmitted. I have seen them walking down the corridor.

I remember going to the annex, which is where inmates go for the last part of their sentence before they leave Pāremoremo prison. I remember some guys who were going to go flatting. They were going to do this and that—they were full of ideas and hope. I visited them a month later and there were no light bulbs in the flat, there was no money, and there was no food. They were down in their boots, and they had no jobs. Two months later they were back inside.

I have seen people go back inside, walk down the corridor and say: “Hi, Jim, hi Joe. Still got my guitar? Put me on the list for Christmas.”, and this and that. They are back home again. That is what we are dealing with and that is what we have to break. That is the reason that I supported the legislation last night. Let us try something different, something innovative. Kia ora tātou.

Hon MITA RIRINUI Link to this

I am not surprised that the chair of the Law and Order Committee does not want this bill to go to the select committee. She does not want to hear about the problems that it will create. She wants it to pass through the House uninhibited, without any problem whatsoever. Well, life should not be like that. Any bill that passes through this Parliament without proper and full scrutiny will be flawed.

I take it from the contribution of the Associate Minister of Corrections that the major flaw in this bill is that he did not know anything about it. He may have stood up in the Chamber last night and made some grand statements about Māori owning the corrections facilities, but he has made that statement on a purely commercial platform. He also has this ideology that if we change the nature and the way that prisons are managed, then Māori will not reoffend. Well, life is not like that. We have to deal with the social circumstances that affect these people if we are to reduce recidivism. The Associate Minister of Corrections may have made two speeches in the Chamber last night, but I did not hear them. He thought I was asleep in the Chamber, but actually I was in his electorate listening to the concerns about his performance in the Chamber on the emissions trading legislation, on the two corrections bills, and on a whole lot of other issues that he has failed to deal with. However, he is learning the realities of politics on the front line.

I turn now to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Georgina Te Heuheu. Some very practical issues are involved with this proposal. The Minister raised the first one, and I thank her for responding to the queries raised by the Green member and by my colleague Carmel Sepuloni about the safety issues and logistic issues with the bill. I take it that the Minister probably has not been into a courtroom holding cell, because if she had she would have a better understanding of the way they are constructed. They are far different from prison cells. They are far different from police cells. They are not staffed by trained security people or police officers; they are staffed by court staff. They are staffed by people who are administrators of court procedures and the like. These people are not trained to deal with inmates who are held on remand, awaiting sentence by the courts.

The problem is that the Minister and the Government have not given this proposal a lot of thought. One thing the Minister is very good at is exalting your good work, Mr Chairperson, as the previous Minister for Courts. The Minister certainly seems to know everything about that. I endorse everything she said, and I say well done for that period of time.

I wonder whether the Minister, apart from answering the questions raised by my colleague Rajen Prasad—and there were only three so she should not have any trouble doing that—can take a call on this scenario. She said that inmates will be taken to the nearest prison for showers and other facilities. I suppose she would dial a pizza, and the inmates would be fed. Take, for example, the district courts at Whakatāne and Tauranga, which have holding cells. The nearest prison is something like 3½ hours’ drive away, right next to her electorate office in Taupō and further south in Tūrangi. It seems to be a huge drain on resources to get a security vehicle, staffed by two members, to take prisoners 3½ hours down the road for a shower and then bring them back—and I suppose they will want to go to the toilet while they are there. They might even want to be fed on the way there and on the way back. I know that the Minister’s portfolio is not resourced to handle those sorts of contingencies, because the Minister of Finance is cutting back.

SUE KEDGLEY Link to this

Yes, the Associate Minister says he does not know the answers to these questions. We have been told that prisoners will travel to the nearest prison to have their shower, but, as some of my colleagues said, that could mean travelling for 3 hours. There is a world of difference between a prisoner going to a court cell for a few hours and a prisoner being kept in a court cell for 4 days and 4 nights. My prediction is that it will be for 4 months—it will be ongoing. Nothing in the bill restricts the length of stay to 4 days.

We have all those unanswered questions. The Associate Minister himself says there are serious security issues here. The court cells are not built as prison cells, so there are huge security issues. The court cells are staffed by court staff. Will we suddenly have prison guards coming in from Rimutaka Prison and so on to patrol and to look after prisoners who are holed up in the court cells? We do not have answers to any of these questions. This is astonishing. A bill is being rammed through Parliament in the dead of night—actually, during the day, I must admit—and the Government has allowed not one New Zealander to be consulted on it.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this

That is right. Here is the serious issue: Dr Sharples is the Associate Minister of Corrections. He got to his feet, and I concede that he raised some very legitimate questions. He asked for answers. I have a question, through the Chair, to that Minister. He shares an office somewhere down the corridor from the Minister of Corrections. He shares a portfolio called “corrections” with the Minister of Corrections, and, as Sue Kedgley and others pointed out, that Minister, who is a member of the executive, has raised serious questions about a bill that comes under his portfolio. He does not know the answers.

That raises a serious issue. It could mean a number of things. It could mean that he has not read his briefing papers—and we know, from the financial review, that the Minister of Corrections received in the order of, I think, a couple of hundred briefing papers. The Associate Minister of Corrections received 17 in a year. So either he does not read his briefing papers, or—and I suspect that this is closer to the truth—the Minister of Corrections does not communicate with her associate. I would have thought that the Associate Minister would, when he was in the Chamber, be the Minister in the chair, not Georgina te Heuheu, the Minister for Courts. This issue is not within her portfolio brief. I would have thought that the Minister of Corrections would be in the chair, because she knows this bill—all five clauses, one A3 piece of paper, and 3½ pages of the regulatory impact statement on a website—backwards, and she would have been able to rattle off in a microsecond the answers to the legitimate questions around security, transportation, sanitation, and budgetary costs.

Here is the point: the Associate Minister gets up and makes history by questioning his own bill. He worries about the consequences of the actions in terms of implementation in a bill that is under his partial control as the Associate Minister of Corrections. I ask to members opposite what show they are running in a Government, an executive. What is the management around this issue? The bill has been brought in with 8 parliamentary days to go, and the Associate Minister of Corrections has questions. I used to be the Associate Minister of Justice. When the Minister of Justice was not here I often took the chair in the Committee stage of bills. I was expected to be able to answer questions about justice bills. Why? Because the Minister of Justice and I talked to each other, we read our briefing papers, and we took an interest in bills as we had shared responsibility for them.

But today we have made history. The Associate Minister of Corrections gets up, laments, worries, and raises legitimate questions about a bill that he is partially responsible for as the Associate Minister, and he cannot or will not answer those questions himself, because either he was not briefed or he was not treated in a mana-enhancing way. I mean that in all seriousness.

So there is a management issue within this Government. Surely Dr Sharples could take a call and answer his own questions. And I do mean it; I say that to “The Maestro”, Dr Coleman, over there. He has an Associate Minister of Immigration. I wonder whether they talk to each other. I wonder, if there were an immigration bill, whether Kate Wilkinson could take the chair, or whether she would have another folic-acid moment. There is a serious management issue within the executive of this Government. I am astounded that an Associate Minister could not get to his feet and say that he would put up his hand and answer those questions, rather than raising questions himself and saying that those issues have to be satisfied and dealt with.

I ask him where he was when the bill went through Cabinet. Where was he when the bill was drafted? Why did he not raise those issues with his own Minister? Or, if he did, why did she not listen to him? She cannot have listened to him, because he has raised those same issues on the floor of Parliament. He is looking quite legitimately for some parliamentary support, which he has not received from his own Government.

CARMEL SEPULONI Link to this

It takes 3½ hours. I have an issue in regard to what the Minister said earlier in terms of sanitation and the health of the prisoners. She said that the prisoners will be driven to the nearest prison so that they can shower. We thought about that, and we thought that it would be difficult for the security officers driving the vans to provide the prisoners with food and everything else. Perhaps along the way, on their 3½ hours’ drive in the security van, during which they are listening to Bob Marley and singing, they will drive through Kentucky Fried Chicken and get a feed, and on the way back they will drive through it again so that they can pick up a party pack for the prisoners’ mates back in the court cells in Whakatāne. So on their way there they will get a feed, and then they will get to the prison, where they will have a shower. The security officers will then turn round and drive for another 3½ hours to get those prisoners back to the court cells where they are being held. What if one of the prisoners all of a sudden thinks it would be really funny to soil himself, so that he would have to be driven for another 3½ hours all the way back to Tūrangi to be cleaned up? The security officers would not want to leave him like that; they would not want the other prisoners to feel any discomfort because one of their mates has just soiled himself. I do not know whether the Minister has actually thought that one through, and thought about that sort of scenario. It is the kind of very real scenario that she might be faced with after the Government has brought this legislation through the House.

As I said earlier—and as all the Labour members have said—Labour will support this bill. We are supporting this bill because the National Government is in crisis over this situation. It is in crisis over it. It knows that its prisons will not have the capability to deal with the numbers of prisoners it is expecting due to the rise in crime that is already happening, and the expected further rise in crime. So Labour has to support this bill. We in Labour know that the Government needs somewhere to put those prisoners, and the only option for it is the court cells. This issue has come up before. It is not a new thing; it is something that has happened before. But the National Government is taking it to the extreme in legislating for it, and it is doing that because it is in crisis. Its prisons will not be able to deal with the sheer number of prisoners coming through because of the amount of crime being committed.

My colleague from the Green Party Sue Kedgley brought up a very, very good point earlier on in relation to the regulatory impact statement, which points out that prisoners can be held in court cells for no longer than 4 days—I think it is 96 hours. That is the longest time they can be held there. She pointed out that although that provision is mentioned in the regulatory impact statement, it is not in the bill itself. Therefore, if that aspect of this bill is not fixed up, the Government will be able to house prisoners in court cells for as long as it wishes—for as long as the need is there, for as long as the prisons are in crisis, and for as long as crime is on the rise. More crimes are being committed, and the Government cannot cope with the numbers of prisoners. The Government now can keep prisoners in court cells. That is a real issue, especially given the fact that the public have not had a chance to make submissions on this bill. The public are at risk—that was pointed out in the regulatory impact statement—in regard to court cells holding prisoners, given the proximity of court cells and courts to people living nearby. That has not been addressed, and we need to address it. The public would have a concern about it. So I thank the Green member for pointing out that issue.

She also pointed out that there is perhaps a secret agenda of the National Government to convert the courts into prisons.