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United Future

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Safer Communities for Families

United Future will:

• Increase national Police numbers to 10,000. The current number of sworn police is 7,238, or 1 officer for every 561 people, one of the worst police-to-population ratios in the western world ratio. By comparison, Canada has 1:531, the United States 1:438, Australia 1:427, England and Wales 1:393, Scotland 1:323, and France 1:255. The proposed increase to 10000 would reduce our ratio to 1:406, just below that of Australia.
• Re-introduce 'beat' cops for every neighbourhood, to raise the visibility of police and their interaction with the community they serve, as well as boosting intelligence-gathering capabilities.
• Introduce a campaign to report all offences to emphasise that 'No Crime is Too Small', and resource the police to respond rapidly to these incidents and target 'hotspots' of crime.
• Promote co-operation between community groups, such as Neighbourhood Support and Community Patrol groups, and neighbourhood beat police and local councils. Encourage these groups to share information, develop community safety initiatives in line with the 'No Crime Is Too Small Strategy', and to also function as Emergency Readiness teams, providing a street level infrastructure for civil defence assistance.
• Ensure that police target and monitor the persistent criminals in our communities, particularly gangs.
• Review the effectiveness of traffic police, with a view to whether they should comprise a separate division.
• Increase staffing levels at Police Communications Centres to ensure that 111 calls are responded to promptly and effectively, and consider returning them to control at the regional level to utilise local knowledge.
• Establish a dedicated non-emergency phone line to deal with petty crime, operated at the local level.
• Ensure that police co-ordinate closely with social service and child protection agencies in each community, including automatic referral of any criminal activity that involves children, to improve responses to domestic violence and child abuse.
• Establish community safety plans with police, local bodies and communities, building local knowledge and community relationships, and ensure that all households can receive information about local policing issues.
• Establish a transparent Police staffing formula that ensures a minimum presence in all areas, yet allows for extra police to be deployed where the crime rate exceeds the national average.
• Encourage volunteer and community agencies to take a role in promoting a crime free society.
• Cut bureaucracy and administration compliance costs within the police to free up more resources and time for frontline policing.
• Upgrade Police equipment, such as the introduction of an encrypted radio system and stab-proof vests.
• Introduce three-officer squad car operations so that one officer can be offloaded at the station to process offenders who are 'picked' up while an alternative 'partner' would maintain the two person team.
• Make security systems and their monitoring a legitimate tax-deductible expense.
• Establish a hotline for receiving anonymous information about criminal and unlawful activities.
• Increase funding for the Youth Aid section of the police
• Increase the length of Police training and mentoring programmes to ensure that new recruits are fully prepared.

Early Intervention

United Future will:

• Ensure that all schools implement a character education programme
• Expand successful early intervention programmes such as Parents As First Teachers, Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters (HIPPY), Family Start, and Project Early
• Promote free parenting programmes for all new parents, and ensure that families at-risk are also referred to them.
• Get tough on truancy by establishing a national, centralised database to track student enrolment and attendance, to replace the current fragmented system.
• Provide for education authorities to seek 'parenting orders' requiring the parents of chronic truants to attend parenting classes, as well 'parenting contracts', whereby the parent and the school agree on steps they will take to improve the child's behaviour.
• Expand the Social Workers in Schools Programme
• Establish a 'three strikes' rule for youth offenders, whereby the number of family group conferences that youth offenders may face would be limited to three before the third offence triggers a custodial sentence, even if it would not individually warrant such a sentence.
• Substantially increase penalties for 'entry level' property crime such as tagging, vandalism, theft and graffiti, in keeping with our 'No Crime Is Too Small" policing strategy, to send the message that crimes against property are crimes against people.
• Ensure that the 'No Crime is Too Small' policing strategy is backed up by rapid responses to restore the damage made by petty crime such as vandalism
• Use reparations, home detention, curfews, and work gangs on community projects (e.g. removing graffiti, house construction) as initial sentencing options for youth offenders, established through contracts drawn up between the police, the offender and their family, and backed up by harsher sentences for compliance failures.
• Establish a mentoring programme whereby at-risk youth lacking in responsible role models are in regular contact with others in the community who can have a positive influence on their behaviour, and the behaviour of their families.
• Remove responsibility for Youth Justice from CYF and establish a separate organisation that recognises when youth need to be removed from dysfunctional family environments.
• Establish 'Brat Camps' run by the Army, in co-operation with the Ministries of Education and Health, where persistent youth offenders learn self-discipline, and receive education, training and counselling as a last resort before prison.
• Increase funding for Plunket to increase home visits to double the current levels as a specific strategy to identify families at risk
• Guarantee all pre-school children over the age of three years, the right to access up to 20 hours per week early childhood education at any teacher-led provider.
• Promote free family mediation services to offer support and guidance to family relationships in difficulty.
• Improve classroom discipline at school by developing 'responsible behaviour agreements', to be signed by disruptive students, their parents and the school principal, setting out expectations for improved behaviour, steps to be taken, and consequences for failure.
• Establish restorative justice styled disciplinary programmes in schools to combat bullying and other misbehaviour, requiring the student to understand the implications of his/her actions, involving the parents, and arriving at a punishment (e.g. community service) that is an alternative to suspension or expulsion.
• Ensure that education authorities fine the parents of chronic truants since they must attend school by law, and increase the fine for parents from $15 a day to $18 a day for primary and $27 a day for secondary students, since this is the per pupil cost to the taxpayer regardless of whether they attend or not.
• Resource alternative education providers to work with at-risk youth who have dropped out of mainstream schooling.
• Make parents financially accountable for crimes committed by their children, through liability for damages and reparation as determined by the court.
• Ensure that schools implement anti-bullying strategies, safe classroom programmes and tough anti-drug policies in consultation with the police and other agencies.
• Prosecute parents who continually allow their children to roam the streets for leaving their children without reasonable supervision
• Increase funding for appropriate early intervention supervision and diversionary programmes for youth at risk.
• Reduce the age of criminal responsibility from the current age of fourteen years to ten years.
• Extend the age at which family group conferences may be employed for first offenders, and ensure that they all include re-integrative and rehabilitative elements, and that any reparations, apologies or punishment agreed to are enforced.
• Establish links and incentives with the business community to mentor and support young people
• Amend the Privacy Act to foster co-operation and information sharing between police, courts, schools, community groups and social services when dealing with at-risk families and youth.
• Merge District Truancy Services and the Non-Enrolment Truancy Service, increase their funding, and require the new organisation to work more closely with schools, police, welfare agencies and non-governmental organisations (e.g. Maori Wardens) to ensure that they respond quickly to truancy before it develops into a bigger problem.
• Resource alternative education providers to work with at-risk youth who have dropped out of mainstream schooling
• Establish a research programme to ascertain which early intervention programmes work and are worthy of being rolled out nationwide.
• Increase funding for adult literacy programmes, and ensure that every community education centre runs such programmes.
• Increase resources for mental health professionals to ensure that those who may pose a risk to others or themselves are adequately assessed and treated.
• Amend the Privacy Act so that family members of those who may pose a risk to themselves or society and are under treatment orders may be fully informed of their care and release, with consequential rights of appeal in decisions that place the offender in community or home care.

Support for Victims

United Future will:

• Establish the portfolio of a Minister for Victims' Rights, to be held as a delegated responsibility of one of the Associate Ministers of Justice, to advocate for the interests of victims through the Ministries of Police, Courts, Justice and Corrections.
• Fully support victim restoration programmes for non-violent crimes to ensure that offenders and their families compensate victims for their losses and face up to the people they have hurt.
• Ensure that offenders complete their commitments under restorative justice contracts, and ensure that victims are kept informed of progress.
• Amend the recently passed Prisoner and Victim Compensation Act to make it impossible for prisoners to profit from their crimes through compensation payments, book royalties and media interviews.
• Ensure that Courts make the welfare and safety of victims, their families and the public paramount when considering bail applications.
• Recover reparation to victims through a restitution order at sentencing that would automatically deduct at least 10% of an offender's earnings.
• Ensure that the Parole Board consider the impact on victims and the community when considering the conditions placed parolees (e.g. restrictions on where they will be located).
• Ensure that Parole Board decision-making processes are made available for scrutiny, and are subject to appeal by victims.
• Allow the Parole Board discretion to decide when offenders can re-appear for parole proceedings and allow them to defer hearings for up to five years.
• Ensure that victims are informed about an offender's criminal history before they participate in restorative justice programmes such as family group conferences.
• Ensure that the police and judges undergo training to understand victims needs.
• Ensure that Victim Support is sufficiently funded to be an effective deliverer of services including representation and advocacy for all victims, as provided for under the Victims Rights Act 2002.
• consider parole applications for non-violent offences through a restorative approach with direct involvement of the victim.
• Stop people from leaving the country if they owe reparations, fines, or have defaulted on child support payments.
• Promote greater public understanding of the law surrounding self-defence so that people know what they can do to protect themselves, their families and their property.

Tougher Sentences

United Future will:

• Increase minimum non-parole periods for violent offenders so that they are not released before time, and impose sentences of preventative detention for all serious violent and sexual crimes.
• Introduce tougher minimum penalties for child abuse and neglect, child sexual offences and child pornography. Scrap concurrent sentences so that multiple offenders will pay for each crime committed, with no discounts
• Ensure that those found guilty of heinous murders face life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole.
• Make suitable employment and accommodation integral components of any parole conditions, with non-compliance resulting in the offender returning to prison.
• Remand all multiple violent sex-offenders in custody under monitoring regimes in prison or in a mental health facility for life
• Deny home detention for violent offenders, drug dealers, and child abusers, and enforce breaches of home detention conditions with an additional custodial sentence
• Introduce minimum sentences that more accurately reflect the nature of offending, the impact on victims, and the social denunciation of crime
• Ensure that discretion exercised by judges in sentencing reflects the circumstance of the crime rather than the circumstances of the offender.
• Encourage the use of creative and individualised parole provisions (e.g. curfews, weekend detainment, community work) to assist in the rehabilitation of the offender.
• Increase the minimum non-parole period for non-violent offences from one-third to two-thirds of the sentence served.
• Introduce association with any member of a criminal organisation as a parole violation.
• Make treatment programmes compulsory for all sex-offenders
• Ensure that parole conditions for sex offenders include monitoring, curfews, residential assessments and voluntary chemical castration where it is considered to be beneficial.
• Increase the maximum order imposed by the Youth Court for offenders to attend community-based rehabilitation (e.g. child sex offender programmes) from six months to eighteen months.
• Ensure that compulsory treatment orders for offenders suffering from temporary mental health disorders do not constitute time off a custodial sentence.
• Establish a dedicated facility for the criminally insane
• Introduce legislation that recognises looting as a specific crime, including a harsh penalty regime

Providing a Co-ordinated Response to Justice

United Future will:

• Establish a National Crime Team of government ministers to co-ordinate the government's approach to law and order, headed by the Minister of Justice and including the Ministers of Corrections, Police, and the Associate Ministers of Justice with responsibility for Courts and Victims' Rights.
• Introduce specialist drug courts to allow treatment options to be incorporated into sentencing, combined with the use of further sanctions for continued abuse of drugs and other re-offending.
• Establish a review of the judiciary, to consider the appointment process, accountability, workload and resources.
• Actively promote non-judicial case resolution (mediation or arbitration) for civil cases, making it a compulsory first step prior to court action.
• Develop the concept of community courts for low-level criminal cases, as recently advanced by the Law Commission, to put the victim back in control of the process, and seek to bring about mediated resolutions between offender and victim while ensuring that the need for societal condemnation of actions (the punitive element) is factored in.
• Tender prison management to both state and private providers, and ensure that prison construction costs are minimised.
• Establish an independent authority to monitor prisons and act as the forum for complaints from inmates to ensure that non-legal avenues for their resolution are exhausted before court action.
• Ensure that prison inmates undertake employment while inside at 'normal' pay rates with deductions for tax, cost of board and keep, restitution to victims, fines, and their own family.
• Ensure that prison inmates participate in educational programmes for literacy, numeracy, employment skills and character
• Ensure that prison inmates are provided with co-ordinated re-integration services upon release, including stricter supervision regimes, mandatory drug-testing and drug treatment options, mandatory community work, and access to suitable and stable accommodation, with accountability mechanisms for enforcement failures.
• Increase the resources available to ESR to ensure the speedy analysis of evidence.
• Ensure that offenders are brought before a court within 24 hours of being charged.
• Establish night courts to deal with lesser non-jury offences, to speed up the judicial process.
• Make specialist public defenders available to people of modest means
• Ensure that courts are presented with all information relevant to the case, placing more onus on the police to fully disclose all matters, and requiring the accused to give his or her version of events, neither of which are required at present.
• Introduce stronger penalties for failure to disclose all relevant evidence in civil cases.
• Increase the jurisdiction of the Disputes Tribunal from $7,500 to $15,000 as of right and from $12,000 to $25,000 by agreement of the parties.
• Provide more training for Disputes Tribunal Referees, and increase their salaries and have them placed under the review of the Remuneration Authority.
• Provide for a limited right of rehearing of a District Tribunal case to the Principal District tribunal referee under certain circumstances.
• Monitor the television viewing of prison inmates to ensure that it is non-violent and educational.
• Ensure that prison inmates participate in drug and alcohol programmes where there are identifiable criminogenic needs.
• Enforce stricter disciplinary measures against recalcitrant prison inmates through the withdrawal of privileges, or removal to a harsher unit within the prison system.
• Deny temporary leave for any inmate who is incarcerated for a violent offence unless for serious medical reasons.
• Ensure that there is sufficient capacity in our prisons due to changes in sentencing laws, by improving forecasting models.
• Ensure that the Community Probation Service is sufficiently staffed to enforce release conditions and enhance public safety.
• Ensure that there are sufficient secure places in Youth Justice facilities.
• Establish a taskforce to consider the management/treatment of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system.
• Improve co-operation between New Zealand and Australia to manage citizens that commit crime overseas, including notification at sentencing, legislative co-operation to ensure that parole and post-sentencing regimes may be enforced on repatriated nationals.
• Ensure that all residents without New Zealand citizenship who are found guilty of a violent offence are deported as soon as possible

There is further policy under this heading on their site that does not come directly under our brief of dealing with violent crime and so is not reproduced here.