After the dramatic increases in workload during the New Zealand Parole Board’s first two years of operation, it is gratifying to see the number of hearings stabilise in the 12 months to 30 June 2005.
Just under 9000 hearings were conducted by the Board during the year, on a par with 2003/04. This followed an increase of 25 percent last year, and a workload in the Board’s first year of operation 93 percent higher than had been anticipated.
With the number of hearings remaining high, the appointment to the Board of two additional Judges and five new non-judicial Members in September 2004 was welcome. The new appointees are Judge James Rota, Judge Arthur Tompkins, Darlene Cullen, Richard Lewis, Ievaivai Nua, Patrick Tavai, and forensic psychiatrist Associate Professor Philip Brinded.
The Parole (Extended Supervision) Amendment Act gained Royal Assent on 6 July 2004, and made several key changes to the Parole Act 2002.
The amendment introduced Extended Supervision Orders as a means of imposing further monitoring on offenders convicted of designated offences – child sex offenders – with the Board given responsibility for hearing applications from the Department of Corrections for imposition of special conditions, once orders had been granted by the sentencing Court.
To date, 14 hearings have been conducted to impose special conditions.
The amendment is also designed to give sentencing Judges a greater "sifting" role when determining whether an offender should be given leave to apply for front-end home detention.
Reference to the "nature of the offence" has been removed as one of the Board’s considerations – it is now a matter for consideration by sentencing Judges. This has, predictably, led to a reduction in the number of front-end home detention cases coming before the Board but has not prevented a number of offenders convicted of high profile and serious offending applying for back-end home detention, sometimes several times.
The amendment also requires offenders given deferred sentences, with leave granted to apply for home detention, to be granted bail for two weeks – that being the time allocated for an application to the Board.
This period saw the Board approve parole in 32 percent of the 2584 parole hearings held, down from 41 percent in 2003/04. After two years of operation, the Board is now seeing for the first time offenders convicted since 1 July 2002 and sentenced to up to six years in prison. So more and more offenders convicted of serious offences are being seen as they reach one third of their sentences, unless they have received a longer minimum non-parole period.
Previously, many violent offenders would simply see the Board once, for the setting of release conditions, at the two-thirds point of their sentence. It is therefore not surprising that a greater proportion of these offenders are declined parole at their first hearing.
Similarly, approved back-end home detention applications for the period were 31 percent of 909 applications, compared with 40 percent in 2003/04. With offenders entitled to apply for back-end home detention when they are within five months of their parole eligibility date, the same group of offenders can reasonably be expected to have affected the figures.
Front-end home detention figures were comparable with 2003/04, with 49 percent of 2568 applications approved.
This year saw the Board begin a project to assess the ways it interacts with victims of crime.
Victims registered as part of the victim notification system, were interviewed and submissions also invited from community groups working with victims.
Data collected from this process will be analysed over the coming months with a view to ensuring Board interactions with victims are meeting desired goals.
As part of efforts to increase transparency in the way the Board operates, a public website went on line in August and use of it has increased steadily. Around 2000 visits a month are recorded, on average, with an average of 10 pages accessed per visit.
After considerable work over two years, a television documentary on the Board, Up For Parole, screened on TV3 in May. The programme followed three inmates through parole hearings and included interviews with Board Members and victims.
In my final year as Chairperson of the Board, I reflect on three years of considerable achievement by Members and administration staff.
The workload has been vastly greater than anticipated when the Board came into existence in July 2002 but hearings have been conducted on a timely basis and there is no backlog – a notable effort in my view.
I pay tribute to the commitment and achievements of administration staff and Members of the Board and congratulate Judge David Carruthers on his appointment as the new Chairperson.
Hon. Anthony Ellis QC
Chairperson
New Zealand Parole Board
The law in this report is stated as the law as at 30 June 2005. References to legislation in this report are not a substitute for the statutes themselves.