John Armstrong: Clark ensures she takes no prisoners

The Prime Minister modestly depicted herself as the "master of ceremonies" during Labour's big production number in the Beehive's Banquet Hall yesterday.

Shortening the title simply to "master" would have more accurately described her role.

Helen Clark dominated the hour-long presentation of the Government's revamping of prison sentences and parole to an audience of criminal justice "stakeholders" - and with good reason.

This was one sales pitch Labour could not afford to get wrong. With no fewer than six ministers on hand and Law Commission president Sir Geoffrey Palmer also on the rostrum to lend gravitas, Labour had gone to considerable trouble to get it right.

Even allowing for tougher parole provisions, the mix of shorter jail terms, greater use of home detention and creation of new community-based sentences unveiled yesterday represent a marked shift from the more hardline stance of former Minister of Justice, Phil Goff.

During his six years in the portfolio, he pushed Labour about as far to the right on law and order as the party could tolerate. With the concurrence of Helen Clark, he and former Police Minister George Hawkins did a pretty good job of shoring up Labour's position on a previously highly exposed flank.

As evidence of his success, Mr Goff liked to trumpet the rising prison population. He also rubbished the Act-promoted notion of "truth in sentencing" - that criminals who do the crime serve the time - as ineffective in cutting crime.

A year on from his relinquishing the portfolio, the rising prison population is now deemed to be the problem, with the Prime Minister saying five-year forecasts are "neither financially nor socially sustainable".

Meanwhile, "truth in sentencing"' is suddenly in vogue, with the Law Commission, whose recommendations form the basis of yesterday's "Effective Intervention" package, saying that it is needed to enhance public confidence in the courts.

Greater "truth in sentencing" will be achieved by tightening parole so criminals serve at least two-thirds of their sentence. There is some irony in that, given that one of Mr Goff's rare moments of leniency was to legislate that some offenders could be considered for parole after serving a third of their sentence.

As the Law Commission's suggested parole changes will increase the proportion of time that offenders spend in jail, the commission says sentences will correspondingly need to be around 25 per cent shorter to avoid substantial growth in the prison population.

At this point the Prime Minister would have worried the public might get the wrong end of the stick.

National is already doing its utmost to ensure voters get the wrong end of the stick and focus on the shorter sentences rather than the longer non-parole periods.

That was why Labour was at pains yesterday to stress it had not gone soft on sentencing, with Helen Clark, Justice Minister Mark Burton and Corrections Minister Damien O'Connor all emphasising that hardened and dangerous offenders would be staying in prison.

However, in adopting sentencing options other than prison for "lesser offenders", Labour is trying to shift the law and order debate away from crude calls to simply "lock them all up" to a more rational basis for policy-making.

The associated political risks explain why the Prime Minister was fronting proceedings yesterday. However, her declaration that "the criminal justice system cannot go on as it is" was hardly a vote of confidence in Mr Goff's tenure.

He might have been excused for feeling a bit like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. In his absence yesterday, his colleagues effectively turned up to bury him, rather than praise him.