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Labour Party on Crime and Punishment
According to a Labour party spokesperson, “Life can already mean life, thanks to Labour’s Parole Act 2002. If you are sentenced to life in prison, and the parole board is not satisfied that you pose a risk to the community, you will not be released. The Parole Board now declines 72 per cent of parole applications, up from 52 per cent before the new legislation came into effect six years ago”. But Corrections minister Phil Goff attacked National’s non-parole policy. The New Zealand Herald reported Goff as saying that “this would mean keeping a convict in prison even if they had been deemed not be a risk to the community.”
Labour is monitoring legislation introduced by the South Australian Government, which allows courts to issue restraining orders on members of organised crime gangs to prevent them from associating with other members. Corrections minister Phil Goff said in September 2008 that if it proved effective, “then I’m 100 per cent in favour of it”. However former police minister Annette King said in March 2006 that she did not believes it was “feasible or necessary”. According to party policy, “Labour will make sentences for gang-related crime tougher and support the recommendations of the Sentencing Council to make sentences more consistent across New Zealand. We will continue to crack down on gangs to make our society safer and free from intimidation. We will increase prison sentences for belonging to a criminal gang and will boost police surveillance powers over gangs. We are also developing more comprehensive Anti-Money Laundering legislation which will help shut down the funding of gangs, making it harder for them to survive”.
Labour has repeatedly said it will look into a victims’ compensation scheme, but the party has no specific policy to introduce such a scheme at this election. A spokesperson says that “A victim compensation scheme and State-funded reparation raise complex issues that need to be worked through to determine if there would be benefits to victims over our current ACC and reparation system”. In March 2008 Labour asked the Law Commission "to look at the issue of compensation and state-funded reparation". Labour is the only party to have enshrined victims’ rights in law, the spokesperson notes.
Labour does not support lowering the age of criminal prosecution. In May 2008 MPs voted against a private member’s bill to lower the age at which a person could be prosecuted to 12. Currently, the age of criminal responsibility is 10, and the age of prosecution is 14 years-except in cases of murder and manslaughter, where the age is 10. Accordingly, at 14, a young person can be prosecuted for the full range of offences, and his or her offending is dealt with in the Youth Court.
Labour believes it is not the role of the private sector to deprive people of their liberty, a spokesperson says. “The incarceration of prisoners is not an opportunity to make money. The owners of private prisons have a commercial interest and responsibility to their shareholders to make money, rather than an interest in rehabilitation of prisoners”.