The new National government is promising tougher bail laws before Christmas.
Parliament will sit for two weeks in December and Justice Minister Simon Power says repealing recent changes that made it easier for criminals to get bail would be the top law and order priority.
"We think it's very important that the government moves early on to send a signal really early on that public safety is the paramount consideration in our justice policy deliberations," he says.
"We've long signalled our concern with the previous changes in this area."
The Bail Act changes raised the bar for judges wanting to keep an alleged offender in jail while they awaited trial. They required that the alleged offender presented a "real or substantial risk" to the public, rather than any risk at all.
Power said National already had legislation drafted, which it tried to have introduced into the last parliament. It was blocked by the previous government.
The Justice Ministry is working on the law change and National aims to have it passed under urgency before Christmas.
Power says other justice policies National wants to have in place within its first 100 days include:
- on-the-spot domestic violence protection orders.
- increasing maximum sentences for crimes against children.
- allowing police to take DNA samples from all those arrested, on the same basis as fingerprints.
- an extra $50 levy on all offenders appearing in court to go towards a victim compensation fund.
- widening the jurisdiction of the Youth Court and giving it the power to impose longer sentences.
- Compensate victims by levying criminals and putting the money into a Victims Compensation Scheme. Legislation has been drafted.
The policies were outlined as priorities by Key during the election campaign, but another - National's plan to abolish parole for repeat serious violent offenders - has been put on hold as part of the party's support deal with Act.
Under that agreement National will support legislation enacting Act's even more hardline "three strikes" policy to a select committee with the aim of seeing whether the two policies could be meshed together in some way.
