The impact statement warned there would be ongoing costs to the Crown, including increased costs for “probation reports” under Section 26 of the Sentencing Act, and increased legal aid costs where an offender requests other types of reports in lieu of a section 27 report, “for example, psychologist reports”. These could be more costly than section 27 reports because of the limited pool of psychologists able to provide them.
The greatest cost would be to Corrections, which would have to fund the cost of imprisoning people for longer. The average prisoner costs about $150,000 a year to incarcerate.
Officials appear to have provided advice on how much this would cost, but that section has been redacted from the report, citing a need to “maintain the constitutional convention protecting the confidentiality of advice tendered by ministers and officials”.
The Beehive says redactions are made by the Ministry and are done in accordance with the Official Information Act.
Other options put up by officials were not found to be an improvement on the status quo overall, but offered some specific areas of improvement.
A section 27 report refers to section 27 of the Sentencing Act. It allows an offender to request the court hear from anyone to speak about the personal, whānau, community, and cultural background of the offender with the view that those perspectives may help the court when it comes to sentencing.
Officials said that in practice, these reports are generally provided in written form by someone who is “not personally known by the offender”. When the offender has legal aid, the cost of producing the report falls to the taxpayer.
The cottage industry critique refers to the fact that in 2017 there were just nine such taxpayer-funded reports, costing $17,164. By 2022, there were 2429 reports costing $6.45m.
The reports have had impacts on sentencing. Provisional findings from a Ministry of Justice research project currently underway showed the median discount received specifically from a section 27 report was 10 per cent.
Officials looked at a few options as well as just axing taxpayer funding, including: removing taxpayer funding for the reports entirely, as the Government wanted, imposing a cap on fees that could be charged for the reports, introducing an accreditation system, and introducing a threshold for providing such a report.
The Government made good on its campaign promise by opting to remove taxpayer funding entirely. Goldsmith told the Herald “the Government committed to removing taxpayer funding from section 27 reports under its 100-day plan”.
“Simply regulating the report-writing industry would not have fulfilled this commitment, as it would still result in written section 27 reports being legallyaided,” he said.
However, the option preferred by officials was to introduce an accreditation scheme so that only people who met certain criteria could get taxpayer funding for writing reports.
These criteria would include “qualities such as relevant experience and knowledge of the personal, family, whānau, community, and cultural background of the offender”.
This would kneecap the “cottage industry” that had sprung up around the reports by limiting taxpayer funding to what appeared to be the original intent of section 27, which was for reports to be provided by people who knew something of the offender.
“Alternatively, a simpler option is to introduce a set of guidelines that need to be met each time funding is sought for a particular writer to prepare a report. The guidelines would need to be met to ensure the writer has the required knowledge and expertise. This option may improve the quality of the information provided to the court in section 27 reports,” officials said.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
