New drug and specialist treatment units, new community sentences and more prisoner employment are included in a Corrections package targeting re-offending.
The package is part of the Government’s Effective Interventions programme unveiled last month that aims to reduce crime, reoffending and imprisonment rates.
The package includes two new prisonbased drug and alcohol units which will begin providing treatment for an extra 100 highrisk prisoners in the next 18 months. These units are additional to the two recently announced treatment units and bring the total number to six.
Prime Minister Rt. Hon Helen Clark
speaking to the press at the launch
of Effective Interventions.
There will also be two new high-intensity specialist treatment units and more funding for treatment programmes for offenders serving community-based sentences.
More money will also go towards the prisoner employment strategy with the aim of increasing the proportion of prisoners in meaningful work from 40 percent to 60 percent.
A stand-alone sentence of Home Detention and two new sentences of Intensive Supervision and Electronically Monitored Curfew (Community Detention) will be introduced.
The two tiers of community-based sentences, combining elements of punishment, reparation and rehabilitation,are intended to increase sentencing options available to judges. They will provide a clear hierarchy of severity and allow for more appropriate and effective sentencing.
Effective Interventions is a justice sector-wide programme involving Corrections, the Ministry of Justice, the New Zealand Police and the Ministry of Social Development.
Corrections’ policy staff are working with Probation and Offender Services and other agencies to finalise details for Cabinet reports.
These will provide the background for a Bill - for the whole programme of reform - to be introduced to Parliament later this year.
The wider Effective Interventions programme includes changes recommended by the Law Commission to sentencing and parole. An establishment unit for a new Sentencing Council attached to the Law Commission is being set up. It will draft sentencing guidelines that will provide consistency in sentencing across the country and make sentences more transparent. Parole changes aim to ensure sentence time served is closer to the sentence length imposed in court.
Prisoners are expected to serve an average of more than 80 percent of their sentence rather than the 62 percent average at present.
Prisoners sentenced for up to one year will serve the whole period. Prisoners serving one year or more will not be eligible for parole until they have served two-thirds of the sentence, compared to the current system in which they can be considered for parole after only serving one third.
The aim of the proposed changes is to increase public confidence that a sentence will be substantially served. According to the Law Commission, average sentences imposed will have to be 25 percent shorter if the length of time actually served is to remain at current levels and an increase in prison numbers is to be avoided.
Government has agreed to fund the development of a national framework for restorative justice, which will improve the capability of providers and therefore increase the availability of these measures to offenders and victims.
At Corrections, a project management group led by General Manager Policy Development Jane von Dadelszen, has been established to coordinate Effective Interventions work within the Department.
Changes to legislation are due to be introduced from later this year, with amendments to, for example, the Sentencing Act 2002, expected to be enacted next year.
For more information about the measures in the Effective Interventions programme visit the Ministry of Justice website
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ISSN 1178-8453