UnitedFuture believes that strong local communities are the building blocks of a successful nation. For this reason we will work to ensure that New Zealand communities are safe and considerate places where one can confidently raise a family free from the threat of violence and property damage or loss.
Police
It is UnitedFuture policy to:
- Ensure adequate police coverage of rural areas;
- Establish community safety plans with police, local bodies and communities, building off local knowledge and community relationships, and ensure that all households can receive information about local policing issues;
- Ensure that police target and monitor the persistent criminals in our communities, particularly gangs;
- Ensure that police co-ordinate closely with social service and child protection agencies in each community, including automatic referral of any criminal activity that involves children, to improve responses to domestic violence and child abuse;
- Establish a transparent Police staffing formula that ensures a minimum presence in all areas, yet allows for extra police to be re-deployed where the crime rate exceeds the national average;
- Encourage volunteer and community agencies to take a role in promoting a crime free society.
Support for Victims
When it comes to dealing with crime in New Zealand often the plight of the victim is overlooked. UnitedFuture is committed to upholding the rights of victims and putting in place a system that ensures the victims of crime are compensated for the emotional, physical and financial harm they have suffered.
It is UnitedFuture policy to:
- Fully support victim restoration programmes for non-violent crimes to ensure those offenders and their families compensate victims for their losses and face up to the people they have hurt;
- Ensure that offenders complete their commitments under restorative justice contracts, and ensure that victims are kept informed of progress if they wish to be;
- Ensure that victims are informed about an offender’s criminal history before they participate in restorative justice programmes such as family group conferences;
- Ensure that Courts make the welfare and safety of victims, their families and the public paramount when considering bail applications;
- Recover reparation to victims through a restitution order at sentencing that would automatically deduct at least 10% of an offender’s earnings;
- Ensure that the Parole Board consider the impact on victims and the community when considering the conditions placed on parolees (e.g. restrictions on where they will be located);
- Ensure that Parole Board decision-making processes are made available for scrutiny, and are subject to appeal by victims;
- Support moves to allow the Parole Board discretion to decide when offenders can re-appear for parole proceedings and allow them to defer hearings for up to five years;
- Consider parole applications for non-violent offences through a restorative approach with direct involvement of the victim;
- Promote greater public understanding of the law surrounding self-defence so that people know what they can and cannot do to protect themselves, their families and their property.
Early Intervention
UnitedFuture strongly believes in the theory of having ‘a fence at the top of the cliff rather than an ambulance at the bottom’ when it comes to dealing with young offenders or at-risk youth. It is a fact that most violent and serious crime in New Zealand is committed by people who are young or have previously been convicted at a young age.
It is UnitedFuture policy to:
- Improve access to effective parenting programmes for a wider range of parents and parenting stages;
- Ensure that character education programmes, also known as values education and life-skills education, are established in full consultation with parents and staff and operate in all of New Zealand’s schools. Character education is about incorporating universal values such as honesty, respect for others and the law, tolerance, fairness, caring and social responsibility into a school’s culture;
- Get tough on truancy by establishing a national, centralised database to track student enrolment and attendance;
- Enable education authorities to seek ‘parenting orders’ requiring the parents of chronic truants to attend parenting classes, as well as ‘parenting contracts’, whereby the parent and the school agree on steps they will take to improve the child’s behaviour;
- Expand the Social Workers in Schools Programme beyond decile 1-3 schools;
- Use reparations, electronic monitoring and work on community projects (e.g. removing graffiti, house construction) as initial sentencing options for youth offenders, established through contracts drawn up between the police, the offender and their family, and backed up by harsher supervision for compliance failures;
- Support NGO mentoring programmes, such as the Buddy programme, whereby at-risk youth lacking responsible role models are in regular contact with others in the community who can have a positive influence on their behaviour, and the behaviour of their families;
- Increase the number of truancy officers, especially in areas with persistent high rates of truancy;
- Resource alternative education providers to work with at-risk youth who have dropped out of mainstream schooling;
- Ensure that schools implement anti-bullying strategies, safe classroom programmes and anti-drug policies in consultation with the police and other agencies;
- Increase funding for appropriate early intervention supervision and diversionary programmes for youth at risk;
- Extend that any reparations, apologies or punishment agreed to by a child or youth at family group conferences are enforced;
- Establish links with the business community to mentor and support at risk young people;
- Foster co-operation and information sharing between police, courts, schools, community groups and social services when dealing with at-risk families and youth;
- Increase funding for adult literacy programmes, and ensure that every community education centre runs such programmes;
- Increase resources for mental health professionals to ensure that those who may pose a risk to others or themselves are adequately assessed and treated.
See also UnitedFuture Policy on Education – Creating a Safe Learning Environment
Providing a Co-ordinated Response to Offending
Smooth running of our court, prison and probation systems is crucial if we are to successfully manage the implementation of justice in New Zealand.
It is UnitedFuture policy to:
- Allow treatment options to be incorporated into sentencing, combined with the use of further sanctions for continued abuse of drugs and other re-offending;
- Actively promote non-judicial case resolution (mediation or arbitration) for civil cases, making it a compulsory first step prior to court action;
- Develop the concept of community courts for low-level criminal cases, as advanced by the Law Commission, to put the victim back in control of the process, and seek to bring about mediated resolutions between offender and victim while ensuring that the need for societal condemnation of actions (the punitive element) is factored in;
- Continue to tender prison management to both state and private providers, and ensure that prison construction costs are minimised;
- Ensure that prison inmates undertake employment while inside at ‘normal’ pay rates with deductions for tax, cost of board and keep, restitution to victims, fines, and their own family;
- Ensure that prison inmates participate in educational programmes for literacy, numeracy, employment skills and character;
- Ensure that prison inmates are provided with co-ordinated re-integration services upon release, including stricter supervision regimes, mandatory drug-testing and drug treatment options, mandatory community work for those without paid work, and access to suitable and stable accommodation, with accountability mechanisms for enforcement failures;
- Increase the resources available to Environmental and Scientific Research (ESR) to ensure the speedy analysis of evidence;
- Ensure that offenders are brought before a court within 48 hours of being charged;
- Ensure that courts are presented with all information relevant to the case, including inviting the accused to give his or her version of events or risk an adverse inference being drawn;
- Introduce stronger penalties for failure to disclose all relevant evidence in civil cases;
- Monitor the television viewing of prison inmates to ensure that it is non-violent and educational;
- Ensure that the Community Probation Service is sufficiently staffed to enforce release conditions and enhance public safety;
- Ensure that there are sufficient secure places in Youth Justice facilities;
- Establish a taskforce to consider the management/treatment of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system;
- Improve co-operation between New Zealand and Australia to manage citizens that commit crime overseas, including notification at sentencing, and legislative co-operation to ensure that parole and post-sentencing regimes may be enforced on repatriated nationals;
- Ensure that all residents without New Zealand citizenship who are found guilty of a violent offence are deported as soon as possible;
- Support the ‘Friends of the Court’ (amicus curiae) system for Environment Court hearings. The ‘Friends of the Court’ provides independent and objective advice to assist the court in making a decision. This makes it easier for community groups and NGOs, relieving them of the cost of court proceedings and having to employ expert consultants.
Reducing Recidivism
It is a fact that the vast majority of inmates in New Zealand prisons are repeat offenders or are future repeat offenders. UnitedFuture is committed to working with NGO organisations to reduce the rate of recidivism in New Zealand. This does not mean that we are soft on crime, rather, we want to stop more crime from being committed.
It is UnitedFuture policy to:
- Make drug and alcohol rehabilitation courses available for inmates who have been identified with drug or alcohol addictions;
- Make literacy programmes available for those inmates who have been identified as having difficulty with reading and writing, in an effort to more successfully integrate inmates back into society upon release;
- Introduce tougher minimum penalties for child abuse and neglect, child sexual offences and child pornography;
- Concurrent sentences are not to be a default position, with Judges to use their discretion to recommend concurrent or cumulative sentences;
- Make suitable employment and accommodation integral components of the parole process. One of the major causes of recidivism is the lack of opportunities available to inmates once they leave prison. Financial stability, job prospects and adequate accommodation are prerequisites for ‘a new start’;
- Introduce minimum sentences that more accurately reflect the nature of offending, the impact on victims, and the social denunciation of crime;
- Encourage the use of creative and individualised parole provisions (e.g. curfews, weekend detainment, community work) to assist in the rehabilitation of the offender;
- Ensure that parole conditions for sex offenders include monitoring, curfews, residential assessments and ongoing treatment.