New legislation on prisons alarming—M.P.

Press, 24 June 1985, Page 4

New legislation on prisons alarming—M.P.

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington Law-abiding New Zealanders will be alarmed by some of the provisions about prisons in new legislation, according to the Opposition spokesman on justice, Mr Paul East (Nat., Rotorua). He said the Criminal Justice Bill No. 2 contained several measures of considerable concern. One clause in the proposed legislation would allow prisoners to be released from jail if the authorities believed that those prisoners could not be protected from serious assaults in prison. This meant that such a prisoner could be released into the community even though he might have served only a small part of the sentence that a court had imposed, Mr East said. Prisoners who normally faced such problems were those that had been con-

victed of serious sexual offences, such as child molesters. The law ought not to allow those offenders to be released until they had served their full term of imprisonment.

The Government should ensure that there were adequate facilities, in the prisons to ensure that every prisoner could be protected rather than fail to provide such protection and allow criminals their liberty, he said.

Prison officers had said that they were able to protect any prisoner in a New Zealand jail, and the clause allowing the release of such prisoners should not be passed in the legislation. This legislation also provided that someone convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment should be eligible for parole after seven years of incarceration, Mr East said. Many people in the com-

munity would hold the view that this was far too short a time. ■

Convicted murderers should not be eligible for parole until 10 years of the life imprisonment term had been served, he said. At present, the average sentence served by a convicted murderer was about 10 years.

This Criminal Justice Bill ought to reflect public concern about the short time that convicted murderers spent in prison. For that .reason, parole should be considered after 10 years had been served and not seven years. Mr East said that would ensure that the present average term of imprisonment served by convicted murderers would become the minimum term, and that convicted murderers on average would serve longer sentences than they did now.