Abstract:
On 18 September 2012 the New Zealand Government introduced the Public Safety (Public
Protection Orders) Bill to Parliament. The Bill establishes a new civil detention regime with
new court orders to be called “public protection orders” and “prison detention orders”,
directed at high-risk sexual or violent offenders that cannot be kept in prison any longer. In
the light of these developments, this article evaluates the human rights compatibility of New
Zealand’s public protection instruments. The sentence of preventive detention and the
extended supervision order regime will be analysed under consideration of the domestic and
international case law. Subsequently, the forthcoming public protection order regime will be
presented, assessed under human rights aspects and compared with the existing protection
instruments. The author argues that the sentence of preventive detention is inherently
incompatible with the offenders’ rights, whereas the human right compatibility of an extended
supervision order depends on the specific supervision conditions imposed. This article
furthermore demonstrates that the new court orders established by the Public Safety (Public
Protection Orders) Bill constitute justified limitations of the offenders’ rights. Finally, the
author suggests that safeguards similar to those contained in the forthcoming public
protection order regime should be applied in the context of preventive detention and would be
capable of preventing unjustified infringements of the offenders’ rights.
