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THE FAULT IN OUR PRISONS

 

HAS PRIVATISATION FAILED AS A SOLUTION TO NEW ZEALAND'S GROWING PRISON CRISIS?

Labour MP Kelvin Davis (right) criticises private prisons at a panel discussion at University of Auckland. The other participants included Mike Williams, the CEO of New Zealand Howard League for Penal Reform (left) and John Buttle (middle), a Criminology Lecturer at AUT University. Photo: Niklas Pedersen

By Niklas Pedersen

 

Inmate Alex Littleton is flying.

Over the railing from the second tier of Mt Eden prison approaching the concrete floor nearly five meters below.

Both his legs break on impact but Inmate Littleton’s troubles aren’t over yet. Four prisoners are running down the stairs and they’re not coming to their fellow inmate’s rescue.

Instead they’re delivering a series of punches and putting the boot to the 29-year-old. Right in front of the guardhouse in the middle of the prison’s common area.

 

What led to Inmate Littleton ending in this situation on the floor of Mt Eden prison?

Was he thrown over the railing of the second floor balcony by his attackers as he himself claims, or did he ‘fall’ as the Department of Corrections describe it?

And could this incident combined with the others mean the end of prison privatisation in New Zealand?

 

That’s some of the questions that the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Ombudsman will try to answer in their inquiry into the incidents at Mt Eden prison run by private British company Serco. The final report on the first part of their investigation comes out today.

 

It is bound to answer some of the critical questions raised about Serco’s running of Mt Eden prison in the wake of revelations of organised fight clubs and allegations of prisoner mistreatment in the last months.

 

“The reason we’ve had so many issues at Mt Eden is because they’ve cut corners and that’s when staff and prisoners become endangered. The stories you’ve heard is only scratching the surface of what’s going on there,” said Labour Party MP and Corrections Spokesperson, Kelvin Davis in a panel discussion on the issue at the University of Auckland this month.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The government took back control of the prison in the end of July due to the allegations, but that hasn’t silenced the critics of Serco, that accuses the company of cutting corners.

 

“Prison should be about rehabilitation, but a private prison is there to make money. And rehabilitation isn’t going to help them make them money. With their deliberate policy to make money by understaffing prisons, Serco have put their people at risk and put the prisoners at risk,” Kelvin Davis says.

 

Here you can see the Labour MP explain what he believes is wrong with the way Serco runs Mt Eden prison by comparing it to an episode of the TV show "Criminal Minds". Video: Niklas Pedersen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The UK-based chief of Serco, Rupert Soames, defended the company’s management of the prison back in August, where he told TV3 that Mt Eden had gone from “being one of the worst-performing prisons to one of the best under Serco”.

 

But National Treasurer for the Corrections Association of New Zealand, Morrin Whareumu, explains that one of the problems at Mt Eden is that the agreed ratio of 1 guard to 15 prisoners in the public sector doesn’t apply to Serco-run prisons.

 

“At Serco you’ll have one officer unlocking up to 60 prisoners and then multiply that by the unit next door. That’s another 60 prisoners and only one officer, and the quickest way to lose control is not having enough staff to react to any dangerous situations.

 

“You can clearly see what happens if you lose control of a prison. People get thrown off balconies and they don’t get the treatment and help they require,” Mr Whareumu says.

 

That’s exactly what inmate Alex Littleton claimed happened to him that February day in Mt Eden prison. Lying on the concrete floor with two broken legs and getting punched and kicked by four fellow inmates, he tried dragging himself towards the guards’ big glasshouse in front of him. But only one prison guard were on duty. 

 

“One guard looking after 50 or so inmates and he couldn’t step in. And who would blame him? You step in, his life is in danger,” Kelvin Davis says about the incident.

 

A report from a United Nations Committee in May urged the New Zealand government to watch the private prisons more closely. The Committee against Torture said in the report that the rate of violence in Mt Eden prison is indeed higher than in public prisons.

 

Mt Eden prison opened four years ago and is the first private prison since 2005 to operate in New Zealand. Earlier this year the 960-bed Auckland South Corrections Facility, also known as ‘Wiri’, opened as a joint operation between Serco and the government as well. New private facilities needed to house the rising number of prisoners in New Zealand.

 

The latest figures from World Prison Population show that 192 out of every 100.000 New Zealanders is incarcerated. That’s a jump of 14 % in the last ten years and a rate far poorer than most other developed countries except for the United States.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Prisons just don’t work. And this is not a new finding. This is something that has been known since the 1970’s," says Criminology Lecturer at AUT University, John Buttle.

 

"But the political reaction has been to head towards mass incarceration where you put more and more people in prison. Over and over again. And it doesn’t matter if crime is going up or crime is going down, it still remains a trend. In NZ we are very good at doing that. We are not soft on crime.”

 

New Zealand also draws fire in the UN report for having a significant overrepresentation of Maori people in the prisons.

 

Even though this group only make up a sixth of the entire population, more than half of prisoners are Maori.

 

The Minister of Corrections dismissed the conclusions of the report, calling New Zealand “one of the best corrections systems in the world”.

 

"I don't know whether I agree with the assertions that they make based on the evidence that I've seen. I accept their right to make the points, but I don't accept that they are major problems in our prison system," he said to Radio New Zealand

in May.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But John Buttle sees the overrepresentation of Maori people in New Zealand prisons as a sign of darker trend in our culture.

 

“It’s a massive overrepresentation and it shows that we live in a massively racist society,” the Criminology Lecturer at AUT University says.

 

New Zealand’s overall incarceration rate is also almost 50 % worse than neighbours across the ditch. Only 130 Australians per 100.000 inhabitants is incarcerated compared to New Zealand’s 192.

 

But that shouldn’t be the case, says Mike Williams, the CEO of the Howard League for Penal Reform and former president of the Labour Party.

 

“We don’t have longer prison sentences than in Australia. We don’t have a wider range of offenses than Australia. The big difference is that we have a reoffending rate that is off the bloody scale. They go in and they come out and they go in,” Mr Williams says.

 

Privatisation also facing criticism in Australia

New Zealand isn’t the only place that has opened private prisons to handle a rising number of inmates. Australia was one of the first countries to use privatisation in the prison sector.

Today one out of every six prisoners is incarcerated in a private facility, but they have also drawn criticism.

 

“Privatisation is not the solution. If you’re trying to use it to solve an expanding prison population, you have to address the reasons for the expanding prison population. Clearly that has to be the first principle rather than simply a reliance on privatising facilities,” says Chris Cunneen, Professor of Criminology at the University of New South Wales.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Zealand’s incarceration rate is also higher than most Western European countries that has recorded decreasing rates in the last years.

 

“The Scandinavian countries has the lowest prison incarceration rate and the highest is in Russia and among the Baltic countries. However it has to be said that a number of countries has decreased the prison population in recent years,” says Dr Andrea Parosanu, an expert on restorative justice in Europe and participant in several EU-projects about the issue.

 

According to Mike Williams of the Howard League for Penal Reform, one of the central reasons for the low incarceration rate in Western Europe is the ability to keep the prisoners from new offences, once they are released.

 

Germany as pioneer

He points to Germany as an example of a country that has found an effective way of keeping released prisoners from re-offenses.

 

“It’s almost impossible to leave prison in Germany without going to a job. They actually put quotas on big companies. Mercedes Benz takes in 2261 released prisoners per year.

 

"These prisoners, that actually come out and work, are no better or worse than any other worker recruited by normal means. Except for one thing. They are much more likely to turn up, because if they don’t, they know where they’re going,” Williams says.

 

And the prospect of going back to prison could be a big incentive.

For inmate Alex Littleton, his time in prison almost became his last time on this earth.

It wasn’t until the assailants started jumping on Inmate Littleton’s head and the beating almost became fatal, that the lone Mt Eden prison guard stepped in and saved his life.

Inmate Littleton was sent to the hospital, but his stay here was allegedly shorter than expected.

 

“He was supposed to stay at the hospital for some time, but when you’re staying at the hospital you have two guards watching you and that costs the prison money, so they sent him back to his cell with his legs in casts,” says Kelvin Davis who recounts that Inmate Littleton defecated himself on his first night back in prison because no one would come to help him go to the toilet.

 

“It’s just disgraceful what’s been going on,” says the Labour MP.

 

The report on the first part of the investigation into the incidents at Mt Eden prison is released today with the second stage of the inquiry due to be published in the end of November.

Chris Cunneen (right) doesn't think privatisation is the solution in Australia. Photo: Niklas Pedersen.

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