Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER Link to this
When the House was last debating this bill, Martin Gallagher was speaking; he has 9 minutes and 30 seconds remaining.
MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) Link to this
My whips would be delighted if I took that long. They asked me to take that long, but I am not going to. I do not think I need to take that long, in spite of the invitation from members opposite and from my own whips, because I think I can summarise this very quickly.
As the current chair of the Law and Order Committee, I can say that the committee is looking forward to receiving this bill. As I was about to say when the debate was interrupted, this bill will crack down on drug use, eliminate the illicit use of cellphones in prisons, enhance the powers of search in relation to inmates and to those working in prisons, and adopt a zero tolerance towards staff who pass contraband to prisoners. I note that penalties will be increased. The prison term will be increased from 3 months to 1 year, and the maximum fine will be doubled to $5,000. The bill will authorise electronic detection and jamming of all cellphone use within prisons. It will extend prison powers to the screening of inmates’ mail for unlawful or harmful communications, and allow mail as well as telephone communications to be subject to surveillance. It will create a penalty for publishing unauthorised communications from inmates that prejudice the interests of victims.
I will take this time briefly to acknowledge the good men and women who work in our prison service. There are one or two problems, but I think it is important that we never forget that the vast majority of people who work in the Department of Corrections are great New Zealanders who are doing a very good job on behalf of the community.
As I think I said during the debate on the previous bill, I acknowledge the members of the Law and Order Committee. I acknowledge Chester Borrows. In the presence of the current deputy chair of the committee, I undertake that, again, we will roll up our sleeves; we are looking forward to receiving this bill and getting on with the work. I also acknowledge Darren Hughes, who has played a very active role on that committee. I acknowledge David Benson-Pope, Simon Power, and Kate Wilkinson. We are all ready to go. As soon as we receive this bill, we will start work as soon as possible.
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) Link to this
I rise to indicate to the House that the National Party will be supporting the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2), and that it takes great pride in the fact that a number of the issues raised through this legislation were initially brought to light by my senior colleague Simon Power.
The bill seeks to do a number of things, such as create new search, detection, drug testing, and offence provisions to help the control of contraband; improve consistency in the monitoring of inmates’ mail; improve information sharing about high-risk offenders; and jam and disable unauthorised wireless transmissions—mainly from cellphones. It adds prejudice to a victim’s well-being as a ground for the offence of unauthorised communication with a prisoner. It also does something else that seems to be slightly out of kilter, but nevertheless is very important, in that it allows inmates to consume Communion wine as part of a religious sacrament.
The legislation seeks to take account of two factors: the tenacious abuse of any right, reward, or opportunity to offend, on behalf of the inmates; and the huge inequity of power between the prisoner and the prison officer. Sticking up for prisoners’ rights and freedoms is not a popular activity within this country. If we look at the difficulty that groups such as the Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society have in raising money, we see that it is very similar to the difficulties that groups seeking to provide support for young offenders within the youth justice system have in raising any sort of money other than what they can obtain through Government funding. It has been a particular hallmark of this Government that those groups seeking to make better the lot of offenders in our society are not funded for the work that they do. In fact, some of them consider themselves fortunate to be funded for 70 percent of the cost of the real work that they do with young people who are offending within our country.
As a young solicitor—well, maybe not young, but a fairly green solicitor—I found it quite ironic that some of the draconian measures within the Penal Institutions Act still exist, when it comes to trying to exert the rights of prisoners. For instance, a visiting justice of the peace who is going to hear a complaint or a charge brought against a prisoner has the right to decide whether that prisoner is legally represented in that hearing—a hearing that the justice of the peace is about to sit on—under the law as it currently stands.
However, I digress slightly. I cite the many issues raised by Simon Power over recent months that have been pooh-poohed by the Government as non-existent, or as trivial and barely requiring any sort of response from the Government. One of those issues was the corruption at Rimutaka and other prisons. The comment was made that there was just a few bad apples. Well, if we look across the prison service at the large staff that it has, we see that there may be comparatively few, but the truth is, as we have found in some of our other services, that a few bad apples can have an extremely detrimental effect on those around them. I guess that is why we refer to them as bad apples.
Points raised by my colleague related to, for instance, Rachealle Nāmana, the killer of “Lillybing”. She claimed that whilst in prison she had access to a range of drugs, including P, and she had a cellphone on which she downloaded pornography. In 2006 a prostitute was found in the grounds of Rimutaka Prison, having been procured by an inmate using a cellphone. In 2006 at least two inmates in Christchurch Prison were sending obscene text messages to women. We recall the incident where Scott Watson, a very high-profile prisoner in New Zealand, was able to send obscene photographs of himself over the Internet. In 2006, P and KFC were being ordered and consumed in the yard of Mount Eden Prison. These matters have needed addressing for a long period of time.
It was found, on investigation, that prison officers were responsible, at least in some part, for procuring items—and, in some cases, favours and services—for inmates whom they were charged with the care and custody of, and over whom they had extreme inequity of power.
It is important to note that the National Party supports this legislation because it has been calling for a strengthening of the Penal Institutions Act and the Corrections Act for some time. It looks forward to support from across the House not only to hold accountable those prison officers who let the team down, but also to strengthen the rights of those people who are vulnerable within the service—that is, the prison officers, but also the inmates whom they are charged to care for.
Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party) Link to this
Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Last Friday’s New Zealand Herald contained an interesting response from the chief executive of the Department of Corrections in response to the Patten report, which inquired into systemic corruption at Rimutaka Prison. According to that newspaper, the corrections boss had “conceded there had been a malign culture at the prison for some time,”. “Malign” was an interesting word to use, meaning harmful or evil in nature or effect. Therefore, it is timely that the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) is on the Order Paper to improve the operations of the corrections system and to tweak the Corrections Act 2004 in order to address the issues that have arisen since its implementation.
As this House knows, improving the operation of the corrections system is, and must be, an absolute priority in order to increase public perception of, and confidence in, the way in which sentences and orders imposed by courts and the Parole Board are managed. If a negative institutional culture exists in any agency of the State, we must do everything we can to address it. Question time has been rife with claims of bullying, harassment, and assaults on staff members. We have heard of reports investigating the endemic smuggling of contraband. Although the David Patten inquiry concluded there was no systemic corruption at Rimutaka, there were a number of worrying outstanding factors. One was that there were allegations of corrupt activity by some staff, which have been referred to the police. The other factor was that some of the most disturbing allegations could not be substantiated, as the former officers who came forward with those claims refused to cooperate with the inquiry. The claims that the prison was being controlled by gangs, and that inmates compiled shopping lists of contraband for guards to smuggle in, although not able to be proven, are indications of an environment that warrants rigorous scrutiny.
We have before us today a range of provisions to improve the control of contraband in prison: provisions to allow a consistent approach to the monitoring of prisoners’ telephone calls and mail, and provisions to allow the jamming of cellphone transmissions. Of particular concern to the Māori Party is that any search, detection, and offence provisions be applied fairly to all, whether inmates or staff, whether gang affiliates, or whether Māori—whatever they may be. We cannot emphasise that too greatly.
In the case of Rimutaka Prison, the Māori Party has been aware of the allegations of corruption and serious misconduct that have been described by the Public Service Association as a cloud of suspicion hanging over the staff. We know, too, that a number of prison staff have been suspended. The Patten report refers to staff employment processes that needed to be improved. So what is to be done to make the changes necessary to immediately address the so-called malignant culture at that prison and others? In the case of Rimutaka Prison, we have been informed by the department’s chief executive officer—the Māori Party has met with him and the Minister—of a number of steps that have been taken to address the issues.
This bill, though, requires additional search, detection, and offence provisions to come into play to improve the control of contraband in prisons. It includes within its scope provisions that search powers will be extended to parts of the prison inhabited by people other than the prisoners—that is, staff. Section 100(1) of the principal Act is to be repealed and replaced by a new section that will authorise an officer to search any place in the prison, such as a staff member’s locker. Presumably these new actions have been introduced as a result of what the bill describes as an “increase in inexperienced staff members”. That is an interesting observation. I recall the thoughts of Professor John Pratt in Punishment in a Perfect Society: The New Zealand Penal System. Professor Pratt put forward three reasons as to why successive attempts at penal reform fail: there are constraints arising from a lack of funding, skilled staff may be lacking, and there is opposition from a public opinion that demands punishment rather than treatment.
So the question must be asked as to why there are not measures in this bill to increase the professional development opportunities in order to upskill staff. The emphasis is clearly on new legislative measures to punish and to prosecute rather than to educate and train. We know that Governments respond rather vigorously in election year to those who demand a get-tough attitude towards crime, whether real or imagined. It is always a vote winner. This bill, although it supposedly has an honourable intent, is, along with other bills that have come before this House such as the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill, part of that vote-catching election year legislative parade.
The other key pressure that has created the need for this bill is around the concept of electronic communication. The bill responds to the technological advances that have occurred with particular relevance to cellphones. The bill will now give the department the authority to intercept, monitor, disable, disrupt, and interfere with wireless transmissions in order to prevent cellphone use. The bill states in black and white that within prison walls, cellphones have been used by prisoners to organise further criminal offending, to threaten and harass witnesses, and to organise escapes. The bewildering thing beyond all of that, of course, is how on earth prisoners are able to get away with their continued success in a criminal career while inside prison walls.
A couple of months ago in Christchurch, Judge Michael Crosbie gave out a sentence to an offender who “fixed” evidence with text messages from jail. He noted at the sentencing that the courts are seeing more and more of that type of offending organised by texting in a prison environment. We therefore welcome the arrangements that have gone on between the Department of Corrections, Vodafone, and Telecom to put in place a blocking technology to put unauthorised cellphones out of action. I am particularly pleased with the point about harassment because a lot of prisoners have used cellphones to harass their partners or other whānau out there to do stuff for them.
We are pleased that stiffer penalties are not the only option to address the threat of communications devices, but that a more comprehensive block-out of coverage is being considered through more technical arrangements, as well. As I understand it the blocking technology has been rolled out in Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison, so we will be interested to hear any reports from the Minister as to how well that trial has gone.
Finally, I want to refer to the new provisions around information sharing. This bill continues the path of surveillance that we have seen in many other bills before this House. It extends the current provisions around the release of information on high-risk offenders to the police to also include other relevant social agencies. We will be keen to see whether the measures in this bill can actually assist in facilitating the rehabilitation of offenders or whether the emphasis is all on managing risk and monitoring the offender in his or her return to the community. What we know is that some 41.1 percent of all prisoners are reconvicted within 12 months of their release from prison, and that that figure rises to 56.4 percent after 2 years. Given those statistics, we are absolutely passionate about the need to introduce meaningful and effective reintegration and rehabilitation programmes, which are not there at the moment.
We are happy to support this bill to go through to the select committee in order to ensure that the voices of experience can be heard on that and other issues of contention in this bill.
RON MARK (NZ First) Link to this
I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of this bill. We will be supporting its passage through to the Law and Order Committee, and we look forward to the work that will confront us at the select committee.
For years, I think it is fair to say, since New Zealand First was founded by the Rt Hon Winston Peters back in 1993, our party has advocated some pretty firm views and attitudes on law and order and on policies and laws such as community centres and aspects of the home detention laws. We have also been vigorous and consistent in our support for the police in terms of increasing their resources, increasing their numbers, and increasing the legislative armoury available to them to be able to prosecute and, in concert with that, reduce the levels of crime on our streets to try to make them safer. In short, I think we have been described as tough on law and order. We have talked about such things as the introduction of the Limited Service Volunteers scheme and expanding it to make it more available to young offenders as a form of community service or a part of their sentence or their diversion. It is interesting that the party that opposed us on those views back in 1996 now touts those views as its own. It is interesting how time moves along and things change.
Chris TremainIt is a new century, and there are new people in the caucus—that is what I note.
What is not so often recognised is that New Zealand First has also, in tandem with that, been very firm on its scrutiny of police and of the Department of Corrections with regard to the way in which they have gone about their business. I say with pride that my caucus supported me very strongly in my investigations into the activities that went on in Christchurch Prison and the emergency response unit—know then as the “goon squad”. It took 4 long years of battle but finally we got the inquiry we sought, and the evidence is there for everybody to read to this day.
It is interesting, in the light of this bill, to go back to the report of Ailsa Duffy QC. It seems bizarre to me that we are here in 2008 dealing with a bill that seeks to attack the issue of contraband. Yet one of the issues that was raised by prison officers, who were angry, frustrated, and annoyed at the things they were being made to do, and at the inconsistencies and the operating procedures within Canterbury’s prisons—and it was highlighted by Ailsa Duffy—was that there was no reporting, recording, or registering of contraband confiscated from visitors or inmates and, surprise, surprise, some of it used to go missing, just into thin air.
No one knew what happened to the marijuana that had been confiscated. No one knew what happened to the alcohol that had been confiscated—it all just disappeared. That was in 2004. Of course, prison officers were bringing this to my attention and saying: “This is appalling. We shouldn’t be operating like this. Our management is slack. Our management is useless. Our management is actually contributing to the problems by not recognising that there is a problem. They are not putting in place procedures and mechanisms to prevent the problem.” Those prison officers were roundly chastised and persecuted by people. Yet here we are in 2008 talking about dealing with contraband.
I also note with interest that people in the National caucus have been asking written questions about contraband, and Ministers of the day have been answering those questions by saying they are unable to give details of how much contraband has been confiscated because to do so would require manual—manual—compilation of all those details from all the prisons all over the country. Hello! In this day and age, when we have spent hundreds of millions developing INCIS computers, spent hundreds of millions giving Land Information New Zealand a flash computer and information technology, when Parliament has expanded its information technology system, and when the courts have expanded and integrated an information technology system, are we saying that the Department of Corrections in 2008 is incapable?
The Department of Corrections has spent how many millions on an integrated sentencing management scheme—the Integrated Offender Management system? How many millions has it spent on that? Is it $40 million, $50 million, or $100 million? I do not know. Yet people there have the nerve to say that they are incapable of recalling, at the touch of a button, a record of how much contraband has been confiscated, where it was confiscated from, and what it was. I would have thought that all of that would be treated as evidence and would therefore be required to be treated according to the well-tried and prudent procedures currently in place in the courts of this land and in the police.
It is silly, it is stupid, and it is nonsensical that we find ourselves in this situation. It simply reinforces the conclusion that many of us have come to—that the Department of Corrections simply does not know what it is doing and is out of date. There are people in its head office here in Wellington, and managing prisons around the country, who should not be there. Half the reason we have had these allegations of systemic corruption within the prisons is that managers have been so appalling at their jobs. I ask members to read the report that Dr Pita Sharples spoke about. It says that there is no systemic corruption within prisons but that there is corruption. It says the greatest failing has been that of middle and upper management.
I suggest to this House that the greatest failing, the failing that has contributed so much and so widely to the problems we have faced in the corrections system over the last 8, 9 and 10 years, has been the quality and the calibre of personnel in the head office—a head office that now houses well over 400 people, 100 of whom are analysts. A movie came out a long time ago entitled Analyze This, and that is my answer to those people. They really need to analyse their employment contracts, get the heck out of the business, and do the whole country a favour, because their incompetence is not just costing New Zealanders money, it is costing New Zealand in the form of the quality of justice that we deliver to people.
I will never be an apologist for criminals but I do believe that every person who is incarcerated is entitled to be treated fairly and appropriately in accordance with the human rights that every one of us enjoys. There is no room in the corrections system for incompetent management. If this bill gives us the opportunity to scrutinise the way in which some things have been done, and to tighten up some areas in respect of the bringing in of contraband, then it is a good thing, and we will do that and get on with it. But why did it take so long? If some of those people back in 2002, when I was so vigorously attacking them on behalf of New Zealand First for their failings, had been honest enough simply to put up their hands and say: “Look, quite sincerely, we have not got our act together and there are a whole range of things we could be doing better.”, we would have been a lot better off, because we would have been further down the road than we are today.
There are many issues within the corrections system, and I am not sure that we are handling the issue of corruption properly and the issue of intimidation of officers appropriately. We do not recognise, it would seem—we certainly do not seem to have, or if we have now, it has taken too long to get there—processes to identify risks that prison officers and their families face every day. I am told that there are many more issues waiting to be brought to this House, and we will do that, no doubt, in the course of this year. I suggest to the Department of Corrections that we should have been prosecuting prison officers a long time ago in the criminal courts for acts of corruption. If we had done that we would have sent a very loud and clear message down the line that would have prevented, stopped, and killed off much of what we have seen since then.
I also suggest that if we had had a better quality of management in some areas—and I know that Rimutaka Prison has had a change in that area—we would not have suffered these problems. Had some people who had been found guilty of misdemeanours, guilty of poor management practice, guilty of corrupt practice, and guilty of illegal practice—and these are all the words of Ailsa Duffy QC—been fired from the Department of Corrections, and if their service been terminated and they had been punished, we would have also sent a very loud and clear message. But that did not happen. In fact, in one case that I can think of right now, the man who so infamously made a staff member put his penis on the bar in the West Melton pub whilst he hit it with a beer bottle got promoted. Need I say any more? It is time for the Department of Corrections to take a jolly good look at itself before some of us do.
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) Link to this
Let me begin by making a couple of remarks in regard to comments made by previous speakers. First, I agree with Mr Ron Mark about the handling of prison corruption. I have to pay my respects to Mr Mark for working so hard and tirelessly over a long period of time to draw to the attention of this House, and bring before an inquiry, allegations of prison corruption and allegations of abuse. I think it is a testament to him that he managed to succeed in opening the lid on a number of those issues. I thank him for that. I agree that there is a real issue in terms of addressing the systemic problems within the Department of Corrections. That is why I worked so hard for a number of years to get an independent prison inspectorate, which we finally got in the form of an Ombudsman for prisons with resourcing to do investigations. I think it is interesting that the media, which pays so much attention to allegations of corruption and problems and difficulties, showed absolutely no interest in the solution in terms of an independent prison inspectorate. I think it was the day that Mr Henare got biffed, and that kind of forced everything else off the headlines because that is much more important news than trying to solve the serious problems in the Department of Corrections.
Hon Tau HenareI certainly do not blame Mr Henare for that.
I would like to correct Mr Borrows. He quite rightly referred to real issues around contraband in prisons—and it is a serious problem—but he referred to Mr Scott Watson in regard to the allegations of him sending obscene pictures of himself to people. My understanding is that those allegations have been entirely disproved, and that the pictures were shown to have not come from the prison he was detained in at the time. It appears to be one more attempt, among many, to smear his character—like the false rumours deliberately spread that he had an incestuous relationship with his sister; like the false rumours that he had an extensive history of violence. It seems to me that the intention of the rumours that keep cropping up is to ensure that he remains a loathed figure in the public mind, and, therefore, his case remains less likely to be revisited. Fortunately, those attempts are not working.
I come to the bill. The Green Party opposes the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2). The bill has some necessary elements, and, as I have already said, contraband in prisons is a serious issue. There is no doubt about that. But a number of the bill’s provisions are truly repugnant to the Green Party and, on balance—and it is a balancing act—we came to the conclusion that we have to oppose the bill in order to take a stand against these unreasonable impositions. We think there are a whole heap of issues in this bill that need to be addressed.
The first issue is the extension of search powers in regard to staff lockers and areas of prisons that are exclusively for the use of non-prisoners. That is interesting because there is already, under the current legislation, a search power for those areas, and, of course, there has to be. There is no doubt that if there is any suspicion that staff are involved in smuggling contraband into prisons and making it available to prisoners, there needs to be a search power to get to the bottom of those suspicions. What is interesting is that this bill brings in the power to search without even the need for reasonable grounds to believe that an unauthorised item might be present. In fact, there is not even any need to have grounds to suspect that the staff member might have an unauthorised item present. In fact, it goes further. There is no reason even to believe that it is remotely possible that the staff member has an unauthorised item. The bill still provides a power to search in those circumstances. No grounds are needed whatsoever. Therefore, there are absolutely no safeguards for prison staff against what is a significant breach of their rights and an imposition on their privacy. That is entirely unacceptable and it is another attack on the integrity of prison staff, most of whom are conscientious people, and most of whom enter the profession to provide service. It is a profession within which morale is already extraordinarily low, and I think that this provision will simply bury it. It is just unacceptable to provide a power to search without any grounds being required whatsoever. That is probably our biggest concern, but we have others.
The current section 108 of the Corrections Act, in relation to the withholding of mail from, or to, a prisoner, allows mail to be withheld where a manager believes on reasonable grounds that the letter is likely to threaten or intimidate a person to whom it is being sent, or endanger the safety or welfare of any person, or pose a threat to the security of the prison, or promote or encourage the commission of an offence, or involve or facilitate the commission or possible commission of an offence. That seems to me a fairly broad net, and it is pretty hard to see what one would want to catch, in fairness, that that provision cannot catch. The bill extends the right to withhold mail where the manager believes on reasonable grounds it is likely to prejudice the maintenance of the law, but that is not a definitive list. The Green Party is concerned that this provision is extraordinarily broad, vague, and ill defined. What on earth is meant by “prejudice the maintenance of the law”? Half the activities we see in this House prejudice the maintenance of the law, in my opinion. Could that provision include a legitimate, political activity? It seems to me that it could prejudice the maintenance of the law. It seems to me that law reform efforts and legitimate efforts by people incarcerated in prison to advocate for law reform would be captured and at risk under this definition. What about criticism of Government policy or legislation? It seems that if a prisoner writes a letter critical of the Government, then that would be grounds for withholding mail, under this bill. I do not believe that we can allow such an ill-defined extension of the right to withhold prisoner communication.
The other area that I think needs to be touched on is the exception from liability during a state of prison emergency and epidemic emergency. New section 179E(1) in clause 27 states: “There is no cause of action against the Crown, a Minister of the Crown, an officer or employee of a Minister of the Crown, the chief executive … to recover damages for any harm or loss that is due directly or indirectly to—(a) any act or omission by any person that occurs while carrying out his or her functions, duties, or powers under a provision of this Act or the regulations that has been modified by Order in Council under the Epidemic Preparedness Act 2006 while an epidemic notice is in force;”. Subsection (1) also lists other situations. That is a stand-alone provision and again seems to me to be dangerously broad in terms of exempting the Crown from liability for any action taken while an epidemic notice is in force.
In the few seconds remaining to me I will touch on clause 6, which is entitled “Religious and spiritual needs”. Although there are restrictions around the possession and consumption of alcohol in prison, the amended section 79(3) in clause 6 states: “Section 129(a) does not apply to a prisoner who during a religious service (whether inside or outside a prison) consumes wine provided at the service by a prison chaplain or minister of religion for the purposes of the Eucharist, Holy Communion, Mass, or Communion.” That seems to me to be a blatant case of religious discrimination. I am a member of a faith whose holy sacrament will not be allowed by this provision. In fact, if an elder of the Rastafarian faith was to attempt to administer a sacrament to someone in prison, the elder probably would not get out! Although I realise there is a certain level of amusement about the notion, I think it highlights a real issue that a particular faith in this country is actively persecuted by the law and by the Government.
The Rastafarian faith. I think that is a matter that this House needs to direct its attention to, at some stage.
KATE WILKINSON (National) Link to this
I rise to join my National colleagues in supporting the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) at its first reading, and, after that, its being given due select committee scrutiny.
The explanatory note of the bill states the bill makes a number of amendments “that are intended to improve the operations of the corrections system.” National says it is about time. Over 2 years ago our spokesman on corrections, Mr Power, wrote to the Law and Order Committee asking for an inquiry into the Department of Corrections. It was in a shambles, and it still is. There was a raft of issues that needed—and still need—addressing, including the huge construction budget blowout, overcrowding, a rash of escapes, assaults on guards, a big increase in the smuggling of contraband into prisons, etc. That inquiry has still not been commenced. At least this bill is a start.
I would like first to deal with the issue of contraband. I know that it has been mentioned in the House before. National has consistently highlighted the unacceptable levels of contraband within our prisons. It is a major concern in the prison system, and, as the explanatory note states, items such as drugs, alcohol, money, offensive weapons, and mobile telephones can all pose serious problems for our prison management. The entry of contraband into, and its use in, prisons must be controlled; certainly, it poses a threat to prisoners, staff, and even visitors. This bill creates new search, detection, drug testing, and offence provisions to help to control such contraband.
It enhances existing search powers in relation to the strip-searching of prisoners and the searching of staff lockers. I was interested to note the comments of the Green member Nandor Tanczos, who spoke just before me. Over a year ago it was highlighted that the incidence of attempts to smuggle drugs and weapons into prisons was on the increase. In answers to written questions, we were advised that in the first 6 months of 2005 there were 280 confiscations of drugs, compared with 284 in the whole of 2004 and 224 in the whole of 2003. The number of weapons confiscated in the first 6 months of 2005 was 91, compared with 196 in the whole of 2004 and 132 in the whole of 2003. Knives, swords, clubs, bayonets, knuckledusters, air rifles, firearms, batons, axes, metal bars, and baseball bats were all among the armoury of the prison population.
Although that is worrying in itself, what is more worrying is the reluctance of the Minister of Corrections to update the details. In December last year this written question was asked of the Minister: “How many contraband items have been confiscated in the past year, and how does this compare to previous years?”. This was of concern not only to National members; this was of national concern. The Minister replied: “The information required to answer this question would have to be manually collated. I do not consider this a good use of my department’s resources.” He may not consider it a good use of resources, but I would have thought that with the alarming increase in contraband and violence, it would be prudent to know the exact extent of the problem, rather than to turn a blind eye and basically say that the department is too busy to worry about it.
The explanatory note of the bill admits that “The extent of the amount of contraband being detected in prison indicates that, on their own, operational measures go only so far towards managing the problem …”. Yet the Minister and his department are too busy to even tell us the extent of the problem. We know that some items from visitors are being intercepted, but we do not know how many are getting into the prisons. How many items are actually getting through?
National and others have consistently highlighted the unacceptable levels of contraband within prisons. It has already been mentioned that, on release, Rachealle Nāmana, the killer of 23-month-old “Lillybing”, claimed that while she was in prison she had access to a range of drugs, including P, and had a cellphone on which she downloaded pornography. We have been told that in 2006 a prostitute was found in the grounds of Rimutaka Prison, after being procured by an inmate using a cellphone. Again in 2006, at least two inmates at Christchurch Prison were caught sending obscene text messages to women on cellphones.
There have also been instances of staff being implicated, with claims in the Weekend Herald just over a year ago that prison officers in Rimutaka Prison were in the pockets of gangs, and that prisoners had unlimited access to drugs. Apparently, officers were given wish-lists of contraband to fill, including cellphones, money, and any kind of drug that inmates wanted. Certainly, the Patten inquiry into allegations of corruption at Rimutaka Prison did not exonerate the staff, but, instead, found that “because of the culture that has existed at Rimutaka Prison some corrupt activity involving staff has allegedly occurred”. Until that report was made available, the department continued to be confused, saying in February 2006 that the figures represented “a few bad apples”, as my colleague Mr Borrows has already mentioned. Then in March, a month later, the authorities said “We’ve got a big problem with rust at Rimutaka.”, and later that same month said “It would be foolish to think it’s just a few bad apples because there’s clearly been more than one or two people involved and therefore one has to also say it has to be the culture.”
This bill is long overdue; the inquiry into the Department of Corrections itself is long overdue. But we ask the select committee in considering this bill to take a really good look at whether it does in fact address properly the issue of contraband and staff. It is all very well to be able to search the locker of a staff member, but staff members are hardly likely to keep contraband in their own lockers.
Secondly, this bill attempts to address the use of cellphones. We have heard that in August last year $1 million of methamphetamine was imported from Thailand by a prisoner using an unauthorised cellphone from inside Rimutaka Prison. This deal was conducted inside one of our seemingly toughest prisons, and right under the nose of the special corruption inquiry being conducted at the time. Cellphones are being used by prisoners to organise further criminal offending, to threaten witnesses and others, and to arrange escapes—and also, no doubt, to notify the whereabouts of stolen medals. Disabling and jamming solutions appear to be the most effective method for dealing with this problem, because they can eliminate cellphone coverage within the prison and monitor and prevent cellphone use. The department should be able to intercept, monitor, detect, disable, disrupt, and interfere with cellphone communications within prisons—without, of course, affecting the use of cellphones outside the prison boundaries. I would not like the people of Rolleston, who are surrounded by prisons of various sorts, to have their cellphone coverage affected by this bill.
The issue of drugs in prisons is a serious one. We know that the number of prisoners testing positive for P use has steadily increased, escalating from 35 in 2001 to 139 in the 2006-07 year. A Department of Corrections report in 2006 said that its identified drug-user programme provides little scope for prisoners identified as drug users to mitigate their actual demand for drugs, and that a significant amount of drug use in prisons goes undetected. There are increased powers under this bill, in relation to both the search powers and the provision enabling retesting if a sample provided by a prisoner during drug and alcohol testing is diluted, tainted, or otherwise contaminated. We hope that these powers will make some inroads into the worrying trend of an increase of drugs in our prisons.
This bill is a small step, but it is a step in the right direction. It enhances the search provisions. It improves the monitoring of communications, mail, and phone calls. It allows the jamming of cellphones within the prison. It improves information sharing with other agencies, and, interestingly enough, it now allows prisoners to consume Communion wine. National members look forward to the proper scrutiny of this bill—there are issues—in the select committee through the submission process. We support the first reading of the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2).
A party vote was called for on the question,
That the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time.
Ayes 114
- New Zealand Labour 49
- New Zealand National 48
- New Zealand First 7
- Māori Party 3
- ACT New Zealand 2
- United Future 2
- Progressive 1
- Independent 2 (Copeland, Field)
Noes 6
Bill read a first time.