The commission reviewed laws in place to protect the public from offenders who pose significant risks through preventive detention, extended supervision orders and public protection orders. Photo: 123RF
The country needs an entirely new set of laws to manage high-risk offenders safely and more humanely, the Law Commission says.
The commission has reviewed laws in place to protect the public from offenders who pose significant risks through preventive detention, extended supervision orders and public protection orders.
It has now handed a 428-page report detailing 149 reform recommendations to the government, recommending changes that would amount to a significant overhaul of the law.
President Amokura Kawharu said evidence continued to accumulate that existing laws delivered punishment, but was ineffective in keeping communities safe.
"We must accept that genuine public safety is unobtainable without reshaping our current law and policy," Kawharu said in the report's foreword.
"Simply put, the historical focus on containment and restriction needs rebalancing to put greater emphasis on approaches that treat people who offend with dignity and support their rehabilitation and reintegration."
The cornerstone recommendation of the commission's report is that a single act replace the three existing regimes that provide for preventive measures, saying the recommended reforms would "improve the safety of our communities while treating those restricted or detained more humanely."
The key recommendations:
- A new act should provide a range of restrictions suited to the different levels of risk posed by individuals. They include supervised life in the community, supported and monitored residential life in community-based facilities, and detention in secure facilities."
- Preventive detention - a sentence under the current law enabling the indefinite imprisonment of offenders - should be abolished.
- Any person detained to prevent them from reoffending should be detained in conditions that are distinct from the conditions of punitive prison sentences.
- New legislation should provide greater entitlements to rehabilitative treatment and reintegration support.
- Eligibility should be based on conviction for one of a range of serious sexual and violent offences that indicate risks of reoffending.
- New legislation should continue and strengthen the option under the current law to place people within the care of iwi, hapū, marae or whānau.
Kawharu said the commission consulted the public, interested organisations, government agencies, academics, the legal profession and judiciary in forming its recommendations.
She also noted New Zealand courts and international bodies had criticised the current approach to managing high-risk offenders, finding indefinite detention with limited right to rehabilitation unnecessarily punitive and inconsistent with human rights.
"We recommend changes to ensure people who jeopardise community safety can be restrained when necessary. However, a central purpose of the law should always be to restore these people, where possible, to safe and unrestricted life in the community."
The report has now been given to the minister responsible for the Law Commission, Paul Goldsmith, and Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell.
RNZ has approached both Ministers' offices for comment. Goldsmith said he had received the report and would respond in due course.
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