Home detention as a stand-alone sentence and new community-based sentences
under the Effective Interventions initiative will mean more responsibilities for Corrections.
New community sentences, including Home Detention as a stand-alone sentence, are likely from October next year following Cabinet approval of a new sentencing structure for consideration by Parliament.
Alongside the stand-alone sentence of Home Detention, two new sentences - Community Detention and Intensive Supervision - would be introduced in a hierarchical structure as part of the Effective Interventions reforms.
General Manager of Probation and Offender Services Katrina Casey says the new hierarchy retains prison as the most restrictive sentence, with Home Detention being the last alternative before prison.
Underneath these are two tiers of community-based sentences - the more restrictive Community Detention and Intensive Supervision followed by the existing community-based sentences of
Community Work and Supervision. Community Detention will be an electronically-monitored curfew for a maximum of 84 hours a week and up to six months.
Intensive Supervision will be primarily rehabilitative in focus and will involve a probation officer working closely with the offender and his or her family and other support people to redress factors contributing to offending. Intensive Supervision will be available for a maximum of two years, compared to one year for the existing Supervision sentence.
The lowest tiers of the sentence hierarchy encompass fines, reparation orders, and conviction and discharge.
A special condition will also be introduced that allows judges to impose “judicial monitoring” of an offender’s compliance with the sentences of Home
Detention and Intensive Supervision. Monitoring by judges will be two-pronged - they will consider a written report prepared by probation officers, and can require the offender to appear before the judge if their rehabilitation or reintegration warrants it.
Katrina says the reforms agreed by Cabinet also include an increased emphasis on basic work and life skills courses for most on community-based sentences. Corrections is liaising with the Ministry of Social Development about how best to provide these services.
“The changes are intended to give judges a wider range of clear and robust choices around community-based sentences, as well as providing credible alternatives to prison for low-risk offenders,” she says.
Corrections will also work with Land Transport New Zealand to make driving skills courses available to people in prison and those serving community-based sentences who have been convicted of driving offences where drugs and alcohol are not a key factor.
Other reforms include amendments to the Sentencing Act 2002, specifying, for example, that a maximum of 400 hours community work can be imposed as a result of cumulative sentences. This amendment has been prompted by the difficulty in administering long community work sentences over several years.
There are also changes that will see tighter controls over the way community work sentences are managed, which may include offenders having to carry out a specific number of community work hours within a specified time period. Probation officers will also have a new discretion allowing them to refuse to count community work hours (to a maximum of 10 percent of the hours imposed) in situations where they consider the person has not worked appropriately.
While the introduction of Home Detention and Community Detention sentences is expected to reduce the need for 450 additional prison beds by mid-2008, the emphasis for the justice sector is one of providing more effective sentences that result in reduced re-offending.
Legislation to enact these changes has been introduced into Parliament. Other Effective Intervention measures that impact on Corrections include new drug and specialist treatment units for prisons and more prisoner employment. The wider package - encompassing reforms across the justice sector - aims to reduce crime, reoffending and imprisonment rates.
Regular updates on Effective Interventions initiatives will feature in future issues of Corrections News. For more information, visit the dedicated Effective Interventions website on the Ministry of Justice website - or link via the Staff Updates page on CorrNet.
The proposed new community-based sentences hierarchy
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ISSN 1178-8453