Justice Policy - Making Good

Definitions

Introduction

Vision

Key Principles

Specific Policy Points

1. Restorative justice
2. Righting wrongs and compensating victims of crime
3. Sentencing alternatives
4. Access to courts and the justice system
5. Maori justice
6. Youth justice
7. Prison management
8. Women in prison
9. Independent Prison Inspectorate
10. Independent Judicial Appointment Commission
11. Domestic/family violence
12. Gun control
13. Supporting a just society
14. Freedom of information
15. Privacy and surveillance issues
16. Police issues
17. International justice

Definitions

Restorative justice has three characteristics:

• The victim is at the centre of the process and the first priority is to heal the harm caused by the crime.
• Community involvement, allowing more appropriate and creative outcomes.
• A focus on getting the offender to take responsibility for what they have done, and take steps to put it right.

Introduction

Justice is about more than how we deal with crime. It is about how we create a fair, peaceful and sustainable world. 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.

Vision

The Green Party envisions a justice system for Aotearoa/New Zealand in which:

• Victims, offenders, families, and communities are supported in taking an active and meaningful role in restorative justice.
• Crime prevention in the rehabilitation of offenders is as important in sentencing as punishment of crime.
• Human rights are respected and advanced.

Key Principles

1. A greater focus on mediation, restorative justice, solutions based approaches, and community based justice.
2. Improved access to and participation within the justice system through improved information services and court environments, and through accessible and affordable forums for dispute resolution.
3. A holistic approach to dealing with crime aimed at cutting offending and reducing our dependence on imprisonment.
4. Our justice system should be part of the way we create a just and peaceful society. An improved approach to justice complements, and is enhanced by wider social justice in Aotearoa/New Zealand and internationally.

Specific Policy Points

1. Restorative justice

Aotearoa/New Zealand has one of the highest rates of imprisonment per capita in the world, and it is growing fast. Despite spending millions of dollars each year locking up offenders, we also have a high rate of recidivism, showing a strong correlation between rates of imprisonment and re-offending. At the same time as failing offenders, the current system does not meet the needs of victims as it fails to:

• Provide adequate compensation for losses suffered because of crime.
• Allow adequate space for the views of victims to be heard.
• Provide support structures for vulnerable witnesses who are often re-traumatised by court processes, despite recent legislative changes.

Our present system is failing. The criminal justice system must be based on what works. The Green Party believes that restorative justice offers a way forward.

Aotearoa/New Zealand has been a world leader in developing and implementing restorative justice. Restorative justice makes the victims' concerns a central feature of criminal proceedings and enables full participation by all affected by offending. The success of recently evaluated programmes in Rotorua and Wanganui, as well as a number of pilot projects across the country, demonstrate that restorative justice works better than traditional court based approaches in meeting the needs of victims and promoting genuine remorse and change in offenders. Although a key part of the youth justice system, restorative justice is still only a small component of the adult criminal justice system. We must begin now to expand restorative justice across the country and build public awareness of the benefits of this approach.

The Green Party will:

1. Increase funding and support for restorative justice approaches throughout the criminal justice system, in a variety of cultural and geographical settings.
2. Provide institutional support and resourcing for restorative justice after sentencing, particularly in prisons.
3. Adequately fund Victim Support to pay for victims to attend restorative justice processes.
4. Develop an information campaign about restorative justice processes.
5. Monitor processes to ensure that they are truly fair and inclusive, and to ensure outcomes are effectively implemented.
6. Extend the problem-solving approach of the Youth Drug Court (which has cut re-offending by addressing substance addiction rather than simply punishing) to other areas of the justice system and in particular youth and criminal areas.
7. Establish meaningful consultation with police, prisoners, Prisoners Aid, Howard League for Penal Reform, restorative justice groups, Justice Department, Work and Income New Zealand and the general public when establishing restorative justice policy
8. Incorporate the Women's Access to Justice Report (1999) into restorative justice policy

2. Righting wrongs and compensating victims of crime

While the Green Party has worked hard to strengthen victims' rights in the criminal justice system, appropriate compensation and restoration for complainants is still inadequate and the need for reform is overdue. The Green Party wants to strengthen the rights of victims and will:

1. Hold an inquiry into the role of victims in the criminal justice system, and into what support systems exist for victims of serious crime.
2. Support provisions to deduct unpaid restitution and court fines through the IRD or Income Support and close loopholes to ensure that family or other trusts will cease to be a way of avoiding liability. When offenders receive Income Support (or are of limited means) they should be given a choice to either pay off fines or provide restitution in some other way.
3. Research the viability of state-awarded compensation for victims as well as provision for some offenders, when deemed appropriate, to be required to recompense the state for at least part of the compensation outlay.
4. Provide counselling and compensation for victims, preferably paid for by the offender, where they have the ability to do so.
5. Research the viability of state-awarded compensation for victims where the offender must pay it back to the state.

3. Sentencing alternatives

Though one of the roles of prison is to protect the community from dangerous offenders, our burgeoning prisons do not result from an increase in crime but from a change in sentencing patterns. Judges are sending offenders to prison for offences that incurred a lesser penalty in the past and they are giving them longer sentences. A substantial number of inmates are non-violent offenders. Imprisoning people for non-violent offences is costly and counter-productive, as it exposes them to hardened criminals. It creates serious financial and emotional stress for families left behind, which in turn can lead to criminal activity in their children.

The Green Party will reduce our dependence on prisons and make greater use of alternatives. Research shows that community-based sentences have a significant effect on lowering re-imprisonment and reconviction rates compared to prison sentences.

The Green Party will:

1. Support a moratorium on all new prison construction except for the purposes of replacement.
2. Increase the range of options available to judges in criminal court cases including:
   
   1. The ability to make orders or referrals to social services in order to reduce the likelihood of future offending, and to combine them with penalties.
   2. The ability to combine orders for community service with other sentences.
   3. 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.
   4. The ability to specifically sentence an offender to home detention as a stand-alone sentence.
3. Develop habilitation centres as recommended in the 1989 Prison Systems Review.
4. Expand the diversion scheme and ensure greater consistency in its application.
5. Establish integrated facilities to work with Corrections, courts, prisons, Child, Youth and Family, counselling providers and police to monitor the rehabilitation of violent offenders and to ensure their victims are adequately protected and supported.
6. Ensure sentencing recognises and addresses:
   
   1. Mental illness, poor life skills or illiteracy.
   2. 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.
7. Increase provision for rehabilitation of existing inmates, focussing on self-recognition and acceptance of responsibility, guilt and remorse, counselling, education, conflict resolution and anger management therapy to prevent repeat offending, and support for teaching non-violent means of expression such as arts and technology as well as work skills.
8. 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.

The Green Party also:

Opposes the privatisation of prisons, but supports public and private contracting for rehabilitative programs and services such as counselling and therapy services.

4. Access to courts and the justice system

The Green Party believes that people should be actively involved in resolving their own disputes, rather than having an outcome forced upon them. Alongside our restorative justice policies, other decision making processes such as mediation, judicial conferences, and facilitation can increase people's access to the justice system while reducing the time involved in dispute resolution and court costs for all parties. They can even improve the range of remedies available to resolve disputes. The Green Party supports:

1. Publicly funded mediation services for civil proceedings. The Green Party will allow courts the ability to refer parties to mediation or further mediation before granting a hearing. The party will also provide a funding framework through the civil legal aid program.
2. Eligibility for community organizations and community class actions for adequately funded legal aid in matters of public interest, including Environment Court proceedings.
3. An expansion in the number of courts empowered to convene Community Group Conferences to achieve resolution without going to trial.
4. Reducing court fees, for private individuals in particular.

Accessible information is vital to participation in the justice system. However, the existing system is fragmented and uncoordinated. Improved access to justice will require improved resources for information and education and the Green Party will:

5. Establish a lead agency to provide a comprehensive range of legal information and make that information freely available via community agencies, libraries and the Internet, and ensure that information is available in major languages.
6. Introduce the use of plain language into court procedures and ensure that it is accessible and understandable to participants.

The use of advocacy can improve access to the justice system. It provides very useful advice to those using its services, including people who cannot afford legal representation or people who are not eligible for legal aid. However, the advocacy system currently lacks financial and practical support. The Green Party will improve access to these services by:

7. Establishing a comprehensive network of advocates.
8. Increasing funding for the community law centre network to provide increased geographical and specialist coverage for different areas of law.
9. Providing training programmes and national standards for non-lawyer advocates.

The experience of going to court can be confusing and intimidating, and is another barrier to participation in the justice system. The Green Party will:

10. Ensure all courts have a staffed information desk visible to anyone entering the building.
11. Allow support people to accompany victims and other witnesses when they give evidence.
12. Ensure that witnesses and support people in criminal proceedings are able to use a separate entrance and waiting area from defendants.
13. Extend the use of other venues other than courtrooms (such as marae and community rooms) in both criminal and civil proceedings.

5. Maori justice

The Green Party acknowledges and supports the effort within the Maori community to develop working models of Maori justice processes. The Greens recognise there is benefit in borrowing from both restorative justice and Maori justice models. Tikanga based justice is as an expression of sovereignty under Te Tiriti and can be a more effective way of reducing re-offending.

The Green Party supports:

1. The development of wananga to transmit and extend such knowledge, and funding for the implementation of such processes.

Maori in prisons

The causes of Maori offending are complex, in part due to the typical effects of colonisation. Research suggests that Maori are more likely to be arrested and convicted than non-Maori who commit the same crime. Structural racism within the justice system will be dealt with through our policy on Maori justice processes, restorative justice processes, and other structural changes outlined in our policies. In the meantime, in order to treat Maori offenders fairly and sensitively, the Green Party will:

2. Ensure that tikanga and reo programmes, prepared and delivered by Maori, are readily available in all prisons and youth justice centres.
3. Facilitate hapu and iwi collaboration in prison management.
4. Fund the development of Maori focus units in all prisons and youth justice centres.
5. Require prison officers to undergo training to ensure they are responsive to the needs of inmates, including basics such as pronunciation of names or understanding of tikanga.

6. Youth justice

The age at which offenders first enter the criminal justice system is significant, as the majority of male offenders in the adult system first entered the system as young people.

The Green Party will:

1. Maintain the age of criminal responsibility at 14.
2. Support the establishment of small-scale and dispersed Youth Rehabilitation Centres to end the detention of young people in police cells and adult prisons, and to intensively address serious youth offending.
3. Extend the problem-solving approach of the Youth Drug Court to other areas of the justice system. It has cut re-offending by addressing substance addiction rather than simply punishment.

Family Group Conferences (FGC) are the lynchpin of the youth justice system in New Zealand. FGC involves the offending youth, the victims, and their families in decision making, with the objective of reaching a decision by group consensus. The Green Party will:

4. Increase funding for training of FGC convenors.
5. Ensure that victims are provided with adequate information about FGCs in order to encourage a higher proportion to attend.
6. Increase resources for FGC to ensure the adequate monitoring and accountability of FGC outcomes.

7. Prison management

If we are to create a genuinely safer society, prisons need to focus more on rehabilitation and re-integration of inmates into society. We need to provide additional support, including opportunities in education, meaningful work and community participation, to help people to avoid a life of crime.

The Green Party will:

1. Encourage inmates to sustain or re-establish family and whanau links by simplifying the prison visit process, providing family visiting rooms, extended visitation rights for parents (ie. allow all day or overnight visits for children of parents in prison in special units, in order to maintain relationships and encourage positive parenting.
2. Increase access to education programmes within prisons so that people have the skills to contribute meaningfully to society once released from prison.
3. Increase access within prisons to effective drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and mental health programmes.
4. Change protocols concerning methadone maintenance within prisons to ensure registered addicts can continue treatment.
5. Close Mount Eden men's prison because of the extreme substandard conditions.

The Integrated Offender Management System (IOMS), designed to provide a new assessment tool for re-offending, has faced many difficulties, including higher than expected costs, inadequate staff training, and difficulties matching offenders to courses.

The Green Party will:

6. Support the concept of the IOMS, and address the failures identified by its recent evaluation, in particular staff training and access to programmes addressing identified criminogenic needs.

8. Women in prison

While women make up only a small portion of the prison population, their numbers are expected to increase over the next 10 years. Female offenders also have unmet needs, mostly related to inadequate resourcing of facilities and programmes for women.

The Green Party will:

1. Undertake a major review of women's prisons to ensure there are adequate facilities, including examining overseas best practice for the design and management of prisons for women.
2. Ensure adequate provision for rehabilitation and skill development programmes for women in prisons.
3. Ensure that visitation rights for mothers and children are adequate, and that these rights cannot be removed as a form of punishment.
4. Establish 'family houses' for pregnant women and mothers to ensure good bonding with infants and continuing attachment with young children.

9. Independent Prison Inspectorate

Recent international criticism and the findings of the inquiry into the Behaviour Management regime indicate that there is a serious problem with the prisoner complaints system. The Green Party believes that prisoners are entitled to safe, secure and humane conditions while imprisoned. If basic human rights are abused, there needs to be a robust and independent complaints system and the state should be held accountable for their actions. The Green Party will:

1. Establish an Independent Prison Inspectorate.

10. Independent Judicial Appointments Commission

During discussions on the establishment of the Supreme Court, concerns were expressed about real or perceived bias in the appointment of Judges to our highest court. As a part of Green Party support for the Supreme Court Act 2003 the government agreed to look into the establishment of an independent appointments commission.

The Green Party will:

1. Establish an Independent Judicial Appointments Commission.

11. Domestic/family violence

The Green Party is committed to reducing domestic violence. The legal system alone cannot do this. We need to break the cycle of violence that occurs amongst families and against older people.

The most common forms of violence against women are domestic and sexual violence. We are committed to rebuilding strong supportive communities and promoting peaceful relationships from the individual to the international level. We honour and support the enormously valuable work already being done to reduce violence and respond to the harm its causes.

The Green Party will:

1. Review, with a view to reducing, the cost of obtaining a protection order.
2. Improve the provision of targeted information to women and men about protection orders.
3. Fully resource the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act 1995.
4. Increase educational and training programmes to deal with attitudes and behaviours that result in violence. Specific target areas would be:
   
   1. Schools - where programmes will include non-violent conflict resolution for both boys and girls and examination of societal attitudes towards gender and sexuality.
   2. Prisons - where we will require mandatory attendance at counselling, stopping violence groups, anger management courses and/or other programmes for people convicted of violent offences.
5. Secure financial support for agencies that provide safe houses and refuge for women and children in violent relationships, and other victims of violence.
6. Provide free counselling and support for victims of violence, including sexual violence, in addition to that provided under ACC. Ensure information about protecting against sexual victimisation is easily accessible.
7. Support programmes in schools such as 'Keeping Ourselves Safe' and the Peace Foundation's Peer Mediation programme to teach children how to resolve conflict non-violently.
8. Develop an inter-agency, collaborative approach to domestic violence.

12. Gun control

Guns have a legitimate role in hunting and are necessary on farms. However, the use of guns in committing crimes is a real issue that the current regulations do not address.

Unlike the UK, Australia, and Canada, and despite the recommendations of the Thorpe Report, Aotearoa/New Zealand does not have a gun registration system. A gun registration system and database allows readily available information on what types of weapons are held by those holding a firearms certificate. This aids police investigation of gun-related crimes and provides police with valuable information about guns held on a property they are entering. In order to reduce risks associated with guns and their use in crime, the Green Party will:

1. Support making private ownership of fully functional semi-automatic weapons illegal.
2. Investigate the benefits and costs of a low fee, centralised gun registration system and database.
3. Reduce the licensing period from ten years to five, in line with practices in the UK, Australia, and Canada.
4. Review the vetting procedures in the firearms acquisition certificate, to ensure that they are in line with best practice.

13. Supporting a just society

Restorative justice needs to be supported by a commitment to a just and open society.

14. Freedom of information

Access to official information is a cornerstone of an effective participatory democracy. The Green Party is committed to improving accessibility of public information.

The Green Party will:

1. Reduce fees charged for public information and ensure that access to information has primacy over cost-recovery.
2. Ensure easy access to public information in cases involving public money or resource consents; e.g. we will ensure commercial sensitivity is not used as a smokescreen behind which publicly owned enterprises hide information.
3. Ensure that all government information and advice is made available to the public archives after 25 years. The only documents exempt are those specifically restricted or withheld by the Chief Archivist on legitimate privacy grounds. Political embarrassment for the government or departments is not a reason for withholding documents.

15. Privacy and surveillance issues

The Green Party is concerned that privacy is being undermined by intrusive personal surveillance activities such as the greater use of fingerprinting and biometrics for identification and tracking devices, the monitoring of electronic communications, expanded rights to search premises, and the greater use of computer data bases to store and exchange personal information.

The Green Party will:

1. Scrutinise closely any increase in state surveillance powers and oppose any that are unwarranted.
2. Scrutinise closely any information sharing between different state databases, and oppose those that are unwarranted.
3. Oppose the development of a universal identification card or system.
4. Adopt the New Zealand Privacy Charter.
5. Support the review of the Privacy Act 1993 and the Official Information Act 1982, to improve the public's access to information and ensure that there are effective reviews in place for those who do not receive the requested information.
6. Ensure judicial oversight of government actions involving the surveillance of individuals, and also the designation of people as a threat to security.
7. Support amending the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 to specifically include a right to privacy.
8. Review controls on the sale of private information, and the exchange of information between government agencies, to ensure consistency with the aims of the Privacy Act.
9. Regulate the use of tracking devices on products so that they don't intrude on people's privacy.
10. Promote and publicise the right of people to see the personal information held on them in state and other databases.

16. Police issues

The Green Party sees the main role of the police as investigating and apprehending offenders and promoting community safety.

As part of this the Green Party will:

1. Work towards the creation of an Office of Public Prosecutions to handle prosecutions and manage the diversion scheme.
2. Support a dedicated and well-trained victim support unit working with police and other agencies, ensuring both protection and healing (through a restorative justice approach).
3. Support a dedicated inter-agency unit to assess and oversee the rehabilitation of violent and persistent offenders.

The Green Party supports a strong emphasis on community policing. Communities and families can assist in both detecting and preventing crime, and in helping rehabilitate young offenders. The Green Party will encourage community policing by:

4. Encouraging recruitment of various ethnic groups.
5. Encouraging positive interaction between the police and communities by establishing community liaison groups. A community liaison representative, appointed by, and accountable to, the community will be invited to accompany police to callouts, where-ever possible, when guns are present. The representative would act as a witness and provide assistance where appropriate.

The Green Party supports a focus on serious crime, rather than 'victimless crimes'. We will reprioritise resources away from victimless crime (such as cannabis possession) and onto serious crime. The Green Party supports:

6. Establishing a truly independent police complaints authority, with adequate investigatory staff of its own, so that it does not have to rely on police investigators.
7. A wide-ranging review into police culture, investigation methods and relationships with communities.
8. The introduction of a stop/search form, similar to that used by the London Metropolitan Police, to be filled out by police on the occasion of any warrantless search, with a copy for the searchee. This will detail the legal authority and reason for each search and provide information on the rights of citizens in relation to the police.
9. The right of police officers to access independent arbitration of their wages and conditions.
10. Writing and tabling in parliament, any government instructions to the Police Commissioner.
11. Releasing well-behaved prisoners near the end of their term on parole to make police cells available when shortages in cells arise.

17. International justice

International measures to prevent abuses of human rights are central to efforts to create a more peaceful and just world.

The Green Party will:

1. Support the continued development and strengthening of international human rights standards.
2. Work towards ensuring New Zealand legislation complies with all international human rights instruments.
3. Support policies that establish Aotearoa/New Zealand as an advocacy leader that promotes respect for human rights in our region.
4. Strengthen the enforcement mechanisms for human rights and war crimes.

In addition, many international conflicts are directly or indirectly about resources. The Green Party recognises that we must share our planet's limited resources fairly if we are to live sustainably. We support strong local communities rich in sustainable work, that judge success by the measure of human happiness and the quality of their environment. Globally, absolute priority must be given to sustaining the world's ecosystems.

The Green Party will:

5. Support efforts by the United Nations to ensure an adequate and fair sharing of global resources as part of sustaining our planet.
6. Maintain our sovereignty in trade, safety standards, food and health.
7. Limit the power of the World Trade Organisation over Aotearoa/New Zealand trade to ensure that New Zealand maintains its own sovereignty.