Rahui Katene

2008/09 FINANCIAL REVIEW OF THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

Rahui Katene, MP for Te Tai Tonga

Tuesday 16 March 2010; 4.10pm

We were fascinated by the five pages that formed the substance of the report of the Justice and Electoral Committee into the Ministry of Justice.

There have been a series of damning reports into the situation for Maori across the justice sector and so it was our expectation that the financial review would at least have a cursory mention in passing of these reports and the Ministry's response.

First off, there was the report of March 2009, a sixty month follow-up analysis of reconviction patterns of released prisoners. That report highlighted that the relatively high rates of reimprisonment for Maori and for young offenders are particularly concerning. The reimprisonment rate over sixty months for Maori offenders, at 58% is over ten percentage points higher than for European, and nearly twenty percentage points higher than for Pacific offenders. And yet the only mention of reconviction patterns was reference to the decision to limit parole for the worst repeat offenders.

The second report we thought to be entirely relevant for this report was the Offender Volume Report for 2009.

The data in this report is depressingly familiar. As at 30 June 2009 the graphs reveal the preponderance of Maori males in the prison population, especially in the younger age groups. As an example, there are approximately twice as many Maori 25 year old males in prison than there were European males of the same age.

Data upon data demonstrates that Maori volumes have increased at given snapshot dates. A quick glance at the evidence and advice received however, tells us that such vital information about offender volumes was somehow not considered relevant.

And so we turn to what we would have thought to be a critical report for this Ministry, in terms of the emphasis on youth justice. We looked at the report presented by the Ministry of Social Development into 'Effectiveness of Youth Court Supervision Orders; Measures of Re-offending".

A key statement stands out in this report, to the effect that we learn that currently in New Zealand there is no research on the effectiveness of the Youth Court supervision orders in reducing the frequency and seriousness of offending.

Now there is reference in the financial review to the Youth Court - and there is also reference to the involvement of the Ministry of Social Development - but this is where more questions are raised than resolved.

For instead of drawing on this very significant finding, the Financial Review suggests that the primary focus for the Ministry of Social Development was to ensure that the policy information was accurate, and I quote, "as distinct from advising on the appropriateness of expanding the jurisdiction of the Youth Court in this way".

I'm sorry, but this just doesn't add up. The Ministry of Social Development's own research tells us there is no research on the effectiveness of the Youth Court supervision orders - and yet that information appears to have been ignored by the Ministry in coming before the Select Committee.

There are some other major findings in that research which have failed to make it to the financial review. There's the fact that Maori are over-represented in the profile of youth offenders at 55%, disproportionate relative to their proportions in the New Zealand population of 14 to 16 year olds at 22 percent.

There's the extremely high recividism rate. Four out of five of the 1800 young people in the cohort committed at least one other offence within the follow-up up period, consistent across the three supervision orders. One would have thought an eighty percent reoffending rate would have been worthy of comment.

Finally I turn to another major report in the justice sector undertaken during the period of review. This is the report which I would suggest every member of this parliament should look at. Its title being, "Identifying and responding to bias in the criminal justice system: A review of international and New Zealand research".

What is so useful about this report, is not that it finally points out the well-known fact that certain groups are disproportionately represented in adverse criminal justice outcomes at successive stages of the criminal justice system.

No - the key value in this last report is that it reports on the likely factors to bring about success in addressing ethnic disparities. It recommends that indigenous peoples should have a central role in programme design, implementation and governance; there should be a holistic approach to address structural inequalities more broadly, and be appropriately monitored.

Mr Speaker, I have bothered to go through these four different reports because it is our view, that current New Zealand analysis and research into the key issues confronting the justice system should form a specific context to any financial review of the sector.

What these reports have told us is that the current evidence depicts high and unchanging recidivism rates, and continued over-representation of Maori at every level of the criminal justice system from apprehension through to recividism.

And yet what do we find when we look at the 2008/09 financial review?

On the first page we find a whole paragraph dedicated to the large number of departmental officials that attended the hearing - as if too many people in a meeting is really one of the critical issues cutting through the sector.

I want to say that we fully appreciate the extra load that has landed on the Ministry of Justice in particular in responding not only to the demands of electoral work following the general election in November 2008, but also the heavy focus on justice and law issues in the 100 day legislative programme of the new Government.

But it is not as if the information is not on hand.

These are all reports generated by various arms of Government - Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Social Development, Department of Corrections.

The facts and figures are there for all to see - well that is all except the members of the Justice and Electoral select committee it seems.

And in one case, even when the facts are explicit, the review manages to slide past them in a way which downplays the reality.

The Youth Justice sector of the report describes a question from the committee as to whether the youth justice system continues to aim to take a diversionary approach to young offenders.

The Ministry of Justice confirmed that this is still the intention, and yet what the statistics tell us is that prosecutions of youth offenders have increased while there has been an associated decrease in the numbers of alternative actions available.

Indeed the report into child and youth offending describes youth prosecutions as trending upwards with the proportion of apprehensions resolved this way increasing from 13.2% in 1995 to 28.1% in 2007.

Mr Speaker, I have no pleasure at all in bringing this up to the date information about the performance of the justice sector to the House. I do so, reluctantly, with two clear aims.

The first is to enable a far more solid context to understand performance issues than is provided in the financial review.

But the second is to ensure that we have all information on hand in order that we do what is needed, to create the solutions we so urgently desire.

And it is the section on Drivers of Crime that I believe offers the one glimmer of hope we need to move forwards.

The financial review reports that the Minister of Maori Affairs and the Minister of Justice co-hosted a ministerial meeting on the Drivers of Crime in April 2009. That meeting was distinctive in its gambit, seeking to address the underlying causes of crime rather than just the criminal justice sector's response to it.

Those causal factors included early childhood trauma, disconnection from society, deterioration of family, community and cultural support structures.

And so it is heartening to read in the report that addressing the Drivers of Crime would be established as a whole of Government priority.

We certainly feel confident that with the work that Dr Sharples is leading in the Drivers of Crime policy; and the work that Tariana Turia is leading in Whanau Ora, that we are embarking on pathways that can help to address these disproportionate and persistent statistics by drawing on the strength of whanau as our greatest resource.