On The Nation: Lisa Owen interviews Judith Collins

Youtube clips from the show are available here.

Headlines:

Corrections Minister admits failure in National’s efforts to meet its own Better Public Service target of a 25 percent reduction in reoffending by 2017.

But adds the number of offenders has fallen by 25 percent since 2011 - so fewer criminals are committing more crime - and she’s confident of reducing overall crime and violent crime (including domestic violence) by 20% and youth crime by 25%.

Minister criticises police and promises improved burglary stats: “Police, in some areas, have not been focused on the burglaries to the extent that we’d like...Burglaries are not looking good, so we’re going to do better”.

Denies having a target to reduce the prison population, despite telling The Nation in 2011, “We cannot continue to keep locking up people at the rate that we have over the last decade”. Says the increasing prison population is due to government’s tough stance on domestic violence and bail.

Reveals she summoned the Police Commissioner and told him “we need to be better” at solving burglaries and the 100 police officer to be moved off road policing will be moved to

Says no new prisons, but plans more cell blocks on existing prison sites to cope with record prison population

Lisa Owen: Welcome back. The police have just announced a crackdown on burglaries, and some are saying, ‘About time.’ In the 18 months to the end of last year, almost 100,000 break-ins were reported and only 9% resolved, so how’s it come to this? Are the police overworked or under-resourced? And why is our prison population at a record high? Well, Police Minister Judith Collins is with me now. That’s about 164 burglaries a day over the past 18 months. Why’s it got so bad?

Judith Collins: Well, we’ve got prolific burglars, and police, in some areas, have not been focused on the burglaries to the extent that we’d like, so I’ve had a discussion with the police commissioner. He’s clearly had discussions with the district commanders, and what you’ll see is that where police have been targeting burglars, as they have recently in Auckland City with Operation Resolve, that’ve we’ve got, actually, not only a drop in burglaries, because the burglars are locked up, but actually also there is a deterrence factor as well.

So did you call the commissioner in for a chat about burglaries?

Yeah, we had a nice discussion.

Did you ask him to step it up?

Yeah, I said, ‘Look, Commissioner, this is really important. Burglaries are very important for people, and we need to do better, ‘and he agreed.

Is that crossing the line and interfering with operational duties?

Absolutely not, no, because the commissioner is actually responsible to me for what the police actually do but not in terms of individual cases, obviously, but, yeah, burglaries are not looking good, so we’re going to do better.

You said there that they were perhaps not focusing on burglaries in some areas. Have they been too focused on other crimes, taking their eye off the ball or…?

Well, no, I don’t think so. What we’ve seen is a huge amount of more reporting, particularly around family violence, and where family violence—we’re always asking people to please report to police, family violence, because we know it’s a very under-reported crime, and now family violence is taking about 41%, 42% of all of the front line time for our staff. That is a huge—

But shouldn’t be an either/or, should it? It shouldn’t be a ‘either you do burglaries or you do family violence,’ but is it?

Well, no, it isn’t, but it does mean that sometimes police end up doing other things and focusing on various things, but look, burglaries are really important. A lot of people have been subject to burglaries, and if that’s happened to you, then you know just how that feels. So, we also have the same burglars – the prolific same ones – and police will tell you that most burglaries are committed by people under the age of 24 years old, so you’re talking about young people, and it’s a very hard crime to catch them for, because of the fact that they go from place to place, and by the time someone’s discovered it, it may have been four, five hours or even days afterwards.

The thing is – you’re telling us it shouldn’t be an either/or choice, but if you look at this year’s budget, they’ve put 300 million into the police, but most of that, about 90%, I think, is going on wages. Their budget’s been frozen for a number of years; some community stations are closing; you’re taking 100 police from road policing. If it looks like underfunding, walks like underfunding, isn’t that underfunding?

Well, it’s not underfunding. They’ve gone from $1.2 billion budget when we came into office to now $1.6 billion. It’s a huge increase. We’ve got 600 more police now than we did back then, so we’ve actually improved it over the years, but also, police have now electronic means to help them do that. They’ve got the iPhones; they’ve got all that.

But most of that money in the budget is going to keeping pace with wages.

Well, that’s also paying back the fact that police have been funding a lot of those wage increases over the years, because police in New Zealand are very well paid, as I expect they should be, so that money is obviously back into the police budget, so that $299 million. It’s a lot of money in one year.

But it comes down to whether funding meets the requirements, the draw on resources, and if you’re having to make choices between going to family violence incidents or investigating burglaries, then they are underfunded, aren’t they?

No, what it means is sometimes some things are prioritised in various ways, so for instance, we talked about the road policing. That’s funded not from the budget but from the national transport funding, and so the police, they’ve got a 6.7% increase this year for the next three years, so that’s actually quite a big increase, but some of that money will be going on technology, like speed cameras, things like that, but police have said to me, because the wages have gone up for police, that they will now be taking some people off road policing and they’ll be putting them into more of their frontline duties around burglary, for instance.

So they will go; there will be a correlation. The ones that come off road policing, some of them will move on to doing burglaries.

Well, police have to do that. Police always have to try and work out what are their priorities at particular stages, but I would say that people are dissatisfied with some of the levels of burglary responses, and that needs to be improved.

But the thing is – if you take police officers off traffic, you’re risking a higher road toll, aren’t you?

Well, not necessarily, not when you have new technologies and particularly things thing speed cameras.

But possibly you are. That’s a possibility.

Well, no, because what we’ve actually seen is a huge drop in road deaths over the last 10 years. This last year was an increase. We didn’t have good road toll, obviously, in this last weekend, the long weekend. That was really bad, but then again—

On that subject, the road toll, you seem to have taken an unusual stance around the anti—zero tolerance and ‘watching speedos kill’. Did you have a bit of a brain fade over that?

No, not at all. I’m talking about distractions, because actually, when you are only focused on speed, you can forget that there’s other things, such as driving to conditions, not being distracted by things—

But that kind of puts you at odds with a core police strategy.

Well, I don’t think so, you know, Lisa, because—

Zero tolerance.

Well, no, police haven’t actually gone down that track of zero tolerance. A couple of years ago, they decided that they would do that, and then they decided not to.

On speeding on holiday weekend, they do.

No, no, they have a 4K tolerance, and that is realistic, because of the fact that speedos are sometimes not exactly perfect, and people don’t want to get—and I don’t like seeing people get speeding tickets for one or two K’s over.

But that kind of suggests speeding a little, just a little bit of speeding is okay. That’s what it sounds like you, the police minister, is saying.

No, I’m not; I’m saying that speed is a major factor in road deaths, but there are also other factors, such as giving into distractions on the road, whether it’s talking on your cell phone, whether it’s texting on your cell phone, whether it’s busily talking to the kids rather than actually focused on the road. These are all distractions, but also driving to conditions, and people in New Zealand seem to have this thing at the moment, this idea that if it’s speed limit of 100 K’s, that that is actually the target; we should all be driving 100 K’s. You can’t do that round corners; you can’t do that when it’s wet. These are things that I’m saying to people. It’s not just speed, but speed is a major issue.

Let’s talk about targets of another kind.

Sure.

Reoffending is going the wrong way. You were hoping to lower it by 25% by next year.

Well, I’ve got good news for you, then, Lisa. Good.

Yeah, because the most recent figures that we’ve seen is the reduction was down to about 6%, and Corrections was puzzled about why that was the case, so do we know what’s driving it? Have you got a new number for us?

Well, I’ve got something for you.

Good.

So there’s two parts around reoffending. The first is the number of people who are reoffending, as in reoffenders has gone down by 25% since 2011, so that is a hugely good result, so people deciding to go an reoffend has dropped by a quarter, but those that are reoffending are the people who are at the highest end, and they’re the people of offending, and they’re often, in some cases, low-level crime or repeat violent offenders, and those people, it’s a 6.7% drop.

So, in plain English, you have a small group of hardened criminals who keep coming back, even though overall figures are down.

Exactly. But we’re still seeing some really good results on people who are deciding not to reoffend, so that is a great thing, but I’d like—

Your overall target, though? Where does that put you with your overall target of reducing by 25%?

Because the overall target is on reoffending, not reoffenders, that actually means we haven’t reached it yet, and obviously, I think it’ll be very hard to get there, but it doesn’t mean to say we shouldn’t keep going.

So you’re going to keep trying, but you’re telling us that you don’t— realistically, hand on heart, you’re not going to get there?

Not on that target, but we have, certainly, when it comes to the number of people who are reoffending – that’s dropped substantially.

But that’s not your target, is it?

Yes, I know, but let’s be realistic here. We just want more people who are deciding not to reoffend, actually.

Okay, let’s talk about that a bit more, but I want to ask you about your other targets while we’re there, which is reducing overall crime and violent crime by 20% by 2018, and then the youth crime figure – you’re aiming to get it down by 25%. Are you going to meet all of those?

Yes, I think we will, even though, when we talk about violent crime, we’re including, obviously, family violence, and we’re trying to get more people to report it. But I can say we take family violence far more seriously, both in police and Corrections, and we’ve got work going on in Corrections on family violence.

So you’re relatively confident that you’ll meet those three targets?

I think we will.

Okay. Well, despite all the efforts that you are putting in, the population in prison is swelling. Might we need another prison?

I don’t think we’re going to need another prison, but we certainly do have money for, and budgeted for, extra cells. Now, I’ll tell you why – because the main thing around the prison population that’s increased is around remand, so that means fewer people are getting bail when they’re up on very serious charges, like violence -- family violence – and methamphetamine supply. So those are—Fewer people are getting that, so that’s actually pushed up the numbers. Also, people who have committed very serious offences are getting longer sentences, and that’s what Corrections have said to me. But they’ve said one of the drivers is that Police are far more likely to charge on family violence matters now, and that is actually pushing up the prison population.

Minister, there’s a couple of things in there. First off, Jeremy Lightfoot said earlier in the year, just a couple of months ago, all the initiatives won’t be enough for future increases – so double bunking, adding on a block here and there – so are you sure you’re not going to need a new prison?

I think Jeremy— When we have been talking before, we actually got the budget bid that we put in, and we certainly are. But who knows whether we may need some more later on? In the meantime—

So possibly, you could need another prison?

I don’t think so. We’ve got plenty of space on our prison estates at the moment. If we needed anything, it will be around more cells on those estates. I mean, we have some estates with 3000 acres. We’ve got room.

So you would build on to an existing— extra units?

Yes, and that’s what we’re doing in Mt Eden. That’s the sort of thing we’re doing. We’re doing it currently at Auckland Prison. We’re putting a very secure unit in there to replace the old secure unit and also putting a big emphasis on mental health.

You mentioned those policies which are leading to more people being denied bail – they’re on remand – and longer sentences. Now, those are related to laws that your government supported – third strikes, changes to bail laws. But does that mean that you’re having to compromise on your target of reducing the prison population in order to stay tough on crime?

We haven’t had a target to reduce the prison population.

Well, reducing recidivism overall – that has the effect of reducing the prison population.

Eventually. That’s the thing – eventually. When I’m hearing and finding that from 2011 to now, we now have 25% fewer people wanting to reoffend and reoffending, that tells me we are getting some progress. But sometimes, it has to get worse before it gets better, and that’s what it is with this prison population.

You said you didn’t have a policy to reduce the prison population, but I just want to play something that you said in 2011…

I don’t have a target, let’s put it that way.

…on The Nation. Let’s have a look.

‘We cannot continue to keep locking up people at the rate that we have over the last decade, and that we have to put a lot more emphasis on rehabilitation.’

You did say that you can’t keep locking up people at the same rate. Well, actually, you’re locking up people at a higher rate. So has the extra emphasis on rehabilitation – has it failed? Or have you just used the wrong kind of rehab?

That was a few years ago, but having said that, do you know what? Lisa, it hasn’t failed, because 25% fewer reoffenders tells me it’s not failing. But what it does mean is that we need to revamp those—

But you are locking more people up, and that is a fail, given the target you gave yourself, isn’t it?

Corrections doesn’t lock people up; we receive them from the courts.

Yes, you do.

And if people want to—

Those were your own words, Minister. ‘We cannot continue to keep locking up people at the rate that we have over the last decade.’ In fact, you’re locking up people at a higher rate.

Well, actually, Lisa, we’re either going to take family violence seriously, or we’re not. And actually, I’m not going to sit here and say let’s not, in fact, imprison people who beat up their spouse and their children and kill children. I’m not going to say that. I’m going to say if you’re going to go and beat up your family, that’s a serious violent offence, and this government’s not going to sit by and say, ‘We can’t do anything because we don’t want to put up the prison numbers.’ We will house you in prison, and we will put you into rehabilitation programmes, and 25% of these people are not coming back. That’s a good thing.

The point is, Minister, you had a strategy. You had a rehabilitation strategy that you thought was going to lower the numbers coming through the door. And you’re not meeting your target. You’ve said you’re not going to meet that target next year. So that’s a failure, isn’t it?

No, no, no, honestly, Lisa. You know one way we could do it? We could stop locking up people for violent offences in their own home. We could stop taking family violence seriously.

Or you could rehabilitate them successfully. That’s the other side, isn’t it?

Lisa, you’ve got to have them first in jail to do much with them. But having said that, we’ve got 25% deciding not to come back. That is a hugely good statistic.

All right. Good to have you on this morning, Minister. Thank you very much.

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