Te Aka Matua o te Ture | Law Commission is seeking feedback on proposed reforms to the laws that keep the community safe from people at high risk of serious sexual and violent reoffending. In a consultation paper released today, the Commission sets out a range of proposals to address community safety and human rights concerns with the current law.

The paper is the latest step in the Law Commission’s review of the law governing preventive detention, extended supervision orders and public protection orders. These laws enable the indefinite detention or supervision of those offenders beyond a fixed-term prison sentence. They have come under criticism from New Zealand courts and international bodies for their inconsistency with human rights law.

The Law Commission has concluded that significant reform is required. It proposes that the current law governing preventive detention, extended supervision orders and public protection orders be repealed and replaced with a single new Act. Under the new Act, people who pose a high risk of serious reoffending would continue to be monitored or detained, with a greater focus on rehabilitation and reintegration as a means of both respecting the human rights of those subject to measures and ensuring the safety of the community.

John-Luke Day, Principal Adviser at the Law Commission, said:

“We think New Zealand’s law could do better at keeping our communities safe while treating people who need to be detained or supervised more humanely.”

“The current approach of keeping people in prison indefinitely raises human rights issues. It keeps them in permanent punishment.”

“The law is also hard to navigate. It is spread across different statutes in a piecemeal way. Those statutes don’t connect as best they could, making it difficult for the courts to impose the right restrictions on the right people.”

“Our reform proposals are aimed at meeting a need for public safety while recognising that a narrow focus on containing and incapacitating dangerous individuals is not good law. Our consultation paper sets out detailed proposals for how we think this can be done. We encourage submitters to share their views on our proposals.”

“Our proposals include what detention and supervision measures should be available, when and how they should be imposed, and how this can be implemented so that any interference with human rights is reasonable and justified.”

The Commission will use the feedback it receives to inform the recommendations it will make in its final report to the Government. More information is available on the Law Commission’s website, including the full Preferred Approach Paper and a submission form. The closing date to submit is 20 September 2024.

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