In response to the damaging allegations of fight clubs, violence and uncontrollable prisoners due to under staffing inside Serco’s private prisons, Corrections Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga has ordered a review.
The review will look at
1 – Whether or not staff knew or helped organise fight clubs.
2 – Whether similar violence was happening at other prisons.
3 – Examine its “contractual options” with Serco
4 – Use of cell phones in prison.
The entire review is a waste of time and a total whitewash. Corrections and Serco knew about these allegations officially for 18months, unofficially they were warned back in 2012. The Corrections Minister has set the review for the last 3 months, they’ve done this as they were aware of the problems and lifted staffing ratio’s for that period of time so that the review could be more positive.
Let me save everyone some time by answering the above questions for the review.
1 – Yes, but the reviews limited scope of 3 months will make it look less serious.
2 – The review will attempt to compare things to Wiri where Serco have boosted their staff ratio to make the comparison look favourable.
3 – This is a joke – the Government have sunk a billion dollars into this right wing experiment – Serco own us now, not the other way around.
4 – The prisoners are smuggling in phone cards, recording the footage and then having them smuggled out – they aren’t live broadcasting from inside the prison as the cell phone dampeners are working and preventing that.
The real questions here should be where are the 2 previous reviews into this and why aren’t they being released to the public? Earlier this year a prisoner was thrown off a balcony and had both legs broken for not fighting.
Serco have a 2 staff per 50 prisoner ratio and it’s this reason why staff aren’t getting involved in fights and violence.
Having Serco investigate themselves is a sad joke.
Martyn,
It shows clear evidence of just another failed experiment in privatisation.
After ten years we will be patching this up still.
Why do these privateers think they know more than the long serving state prison staff do?
I am speechless, just another waste of public funds, and a future massive headache for us to fix again from this Government of experiments.
I agree, Cleangreen. Yet another problem for Nat voters to ponder.
I don’t know how many pointless “reviews” and “enquiries” there have been under National, all to take the heat out of a subject , all results made to order and all have been a complete charade.
However the mother of them all and the one to deal the death-blow to any further Key government enquiry had to be the Judith Collins farce. 500 tonnes of Persil mixed with equal amounts of industrial bleach and whiter than white paint – whitewash.
Why do they even bother any more?
Sam Lotu-liga thats where the buck stops today
he is the one that could make a difference to how serco are going to perform their contractual obligations for the next 25 years
he is the corrections minister after all, this month. hahaha WAFJ
All reviews should be availiable to the hard working tax payers
who pay serco millions to run these prisons,
wouldnt you want to know how your money is being spent.
serco should not be able to monitor review their own failings
an independant body should be looking at serco run prison’s for the last year to get a more accurate picture of what has been happening.
National been rorting us …since for ever
[…] on in Mt Eden, that doesn’t mean SERCO’s running of our prisons is over. Rule 4: Only 2 staff per 50 prisoners to a fight. Rule 5: Up to 3 Ministerial Reviews into how SERCO runs our prisons at a time. Rule […]
Units at the west division of pare (medium security) always had/have 2 staff in each unit of 48 – 52 inmates.
Depending in the security rating the inmates to staff ratios you quote look quite normal to me.
You are either deliberately misleading people to make a political point or you have very limited understanding how a prison operates.
You appear to be misinformed: “Mt Eden prison guards ‘understaffed, afraid’ ” – http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/mt-eden-prison-guards-understaffed-afraid-2015072417#axzz3gzMkiBXk
So which government minister do you work for?
Comments are closed.