Last week I launched the Green Party Justice Policy, my speech is below for your interest.
Hope you're all enjoying the election as much as I am.
Nandor
Crime cannot be reduced by simply locking up people for longer. Governments seem to have an unlimited budget for building more prisons, and a tight purse for social and community development to prevent people becoming criminals.
The Greens’ justice policy, launched today, is a three-pronged approach. Early intervention, greater use of restorative justice and Maori justice processes, and a focus on rehabilitation in our Corrections system.
The first, early intervention, needs adequate funding for the community sector, combined with longer term contracts to allow proper financial planning. Interventions would focus on the individual, the family and the community and address such things as parenting, school suspensions and truancy, housing transience, poverty and mental health services
For the second, we would increase funding and support for restorative justice throughout the criminal justice system. We recognise that Community Group Conferences and Community Sentencing Panels both have their place and require proper support. I am pleased to have played a significant role, along with Kevin Campbell the then Alliance MP, in strengthening and expanding the legislative recognition of restorative justice in the Sentencing Act.
We would provide greater for restorative justice after sentencing, particularly in prisons, and fund Victim Support to assist victims to attend restorative justice conferences.
We think that key to the expansion of restorative justice is better information. We support an information campaign aimed at the judiciary, the legal profession, and police as well as the general public.
Even without it, the value of restorative justice is increasingly recognised. I recently attended, along with Hon. Phil Goff, the launch of Project Restore, a restorative justice initiative for survivors of sexual abuse. Until recently many people saw restorative justice as appropriate for only the most minor sorts of crimes. It is encouraging to see the Minster of Justice supporting an emphatic step beyond such thinking. I like to think that by raising the issue at select committee reviews of the Justice Department and in publicly advocating for restorative justice, the Greens have helped progress the thinking.
The Greens have negotiated a written commitment by Labour for an inquiry into the role of victims in the criminal justice system, and the support services available especially for victims of serious offenses. We consider that this will also be an opportunity to consider the role of restorative justice in the criminal justice system.
Thirdly, the Green Party would reduce our dependence on prisons. Research shows that community-based sentences have a significant effect on lowering re-imprisonment and reconviction rates compared to prison sentences. The Green Party supports a moratorium on all new prison construction (except for replacement).
We would increase the range of options available to judges in criminal court cases including:
1. The ability to combine orders for community service with other sentences.
2. The ability to impose longer sentences of community service, so that the sentence can be used in response to more serious offending without upsetting notions of reciprocity.
3. The ability to specifically sentence an offender to home detention as a stand-alone sentence.
And we would ensure sentencing recognises and addresses mental illness, poor life skills or illiteracy and the necessity for diagnosis and treatment of health issues such as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), undiagnosed deafness, addiction, nutritional problems etc.
We would increase provision for rehabilitation and ensure that the probation service is adequately resourced and well connected to other social agencies, so that probation officers can provide better support and monitoring after release. And we would develop habilitation centres as recommended in the 1989 Prison Systems Review.
The causes of the high rate of Maori convictions and offending are complex. Research suggests that Maori are more likely to be arrested and convicted than non-Maori who commit the same crime. In addition to the structural changes already outlined, we support Maori justice processes and the development of wananga to transmit and extend knowledge about them. In the current system we would ensure that tikanga and reo programmes, prepared and delivered by Maori, are readily available in all prisons and youth justice centre, facilitate hapu and iwi collaboration in prison management, as we did with our amendments to the Corrections Act, and fund the development of Maori focus units in all prisons and youth justice centres.
Lastly, in terms of young offending, we would maintain the age of criminal responsibility at 14.
We support the establishment of small-scale and geographically dispersed Youth Rehabilitation Centres to end the detention of young people in police cells and adult prisons, and to intensively address serious youth offending.
Family Group Conferences (FGC) are the lynchpin of the youth justice system in New Zealand and the first provision for restorative justice in our criminal justice system. We will increase funding for training of FGC convenors, and ensure that victims are provided with adequate information about FGCs in order to encourage a higher proportion to attend. We would also increase resources for FGC to ensure the adequate monitoring and accountability of FGC outcomes.
Let me end by saying that our Justice policy sits alongside our Human Rights policy, and our commitments to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, rebuilding local economies, celebrating diversity and creativity, ending violence towards each other and our environment, and ensuring that people's needs are met. Justice is about more than how we deal with crime. It is about how we create a fair, peaceful and sustainable world.
What do you think the purpose of prisons should be in our society?
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