GUEST BLOG: Arthur Taylor – Starving Prisoners scavenging from bins inside prison

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The Daily Blog
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For lunch Sunday, we got stale bread with 2 lettuce leaves and a thin smear of peanut butter.

Our rations are meagre enough on Corrections $4 per day food budget without this carry on.

It doesn’t affect me so much at my age and being able to afford canteen food, but there are a lot of young men here who have no money & really need what the Corrections Regulations promise “a wholesome and nutritious” diet .

Today, I saw the kitchen manager and showed him my uneaten lunch as proof.

He agreed & called the supervisor in, who said the inmate staff in the kitchen must have been taking supplies – (hard to prove after they’ve eaten them ).

They need to keep a stricter eye on them – that or increase the food budget.

How about it Finance Minister Joyce?

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It’s only in the last few years that I have seen inmates regularly scavenging in the bins for waste food.

It wasn’t like this when I was the prison baker.

 

Arthur Taylor is a Prisoner Rights Activist who us currently serving time inside prison. 

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12 COMMENTS

  1. Yup. This is where we are at as a country.

    “Labour and the Greens are backing National’s plan to get all prisoners working or studying fulltime within three years.

    If re-elected, National has promised to turn all 16 of New Zealand’s public jails into “working prisons” before 2017 and to introduce a new drug addiction treatment scheme for ex-prisoners.

    Corrections Minister Anne Tolley said the working prisons would require inmates to have structured 40-hour weeks, which could include fulltime work, skills training, educational courses or rehabilitation.

    If prisoners refused to work, they could be penalised when they came up for parole, or in other ways.

    Labour’s corrections spokeswoman, Jacinda Ardern, said “you would be hard pressed” to find a party that did not back the new policy, and most prisoners were eager to be occupied.

    Greens justice spokesman David Clendon said his party supported working prisons in principle, as long as the cheaper labour did not undercut the private sector outside.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11322363

    So…wonder what happened.
    Though I guess if you had people working/studying or being rehabilitated you might need to feed them properly…and no Political Party seems to want to have that conversation..we can’t even seem to agree on legislation to ensure kids are fed properly…

    • Well said Siobin. I think David Clendon’s views are very negative. Surely prisoners would benefit from work and study, ie perhaps an unskilled one time school dropout would like to study law or become a share broker rather than be sentenced to a life of drudgery on minimum wage dead end jobs which can leave a man feeling like a loser/failure and unable to even buy something so essential and basic as his own home in our incredibly lop sided society. Little wonder that crime is so prevalent.
      Perhaps it is time for the government to consider encouraging locally owned manufacturing and other businesses rather than maintain the present policy/path of selling all to over seas so called ‘investors’ and corporations. It is difficult to even find a locally owned beer/brewing company since the Japanese giant Kerin bought all the larger breweries.

  2. So you got fed, didn’t have to work for it, have access to a computer and the energy to write dribble like this. You poor bugger. Perhaps the people who waist their time trying to save whales could come and give you a cuddle or even give you a marmite sandwich. In your copious amount of spare time perhaps you and your fellow inmates could manage thought for your victims. No, thought not.

    • You sound like a righteous man.

      May I refer you to Luke 10:25–37?

      Mr Taylor has already stated he can afford to make up the shortfall. Yet he can see some good in young blokes who don’t need hunger and malnutrition added to their legal penalty. He’s prepared to risk to speak up.

      ‘Hungry men are angry men”. It would pay you to remember that, and that it’s not you facing them. It’s some bloke with a wife, kids and mortgage like a mate of ours who ended up on ACC and months off work from being bashed.

      Perhaps you were out hugging your wallet at the time?

      A very high percentage of those prisoners have alcohol and drug addictions. Many have illiteracy issues, too.

      Are you so hard-heart that you’d deny them a fair go and a second chance. “Matthew 18-22 – for a righteous person -21Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?” 22Jesus answered, “I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy-seven times! ”

      If you claim Christianity as your religion of choice it’s a verse worth following.

      I, on the other hand, am not of the Christian religion, for which I give daily thanks.

  3. I thought Louise Upston was the Minister for Corrections? How come Tolley has been quoted above?
    Food is used as currency in prison and there needs to be close scrutiny to stop this happening.

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