You will remember how hot it was during the 2017/18 and 2018/19 summers, It was even hotter for prisoners confined for most of the day [some 23 hours out of the 24] in a small cell, often sharing that small space with a cellmate. Well the guards, who weren’t locked in the cells so suffered nowhere near as much, got slushy machines….at taxpayer expense.
Because of the extreme heat [prisoners were sweating in their cells and suffering heat distress] Corrections instructed Prisons to buy ice-blocks and have them delivered to the units.
BUT staff refused to give them out!!! Same with Cold water, they were ordered to take large chilled water containers to the units for staff to give out, they refused claiming they were “too busy”.
YEAH RIGHT for the whole of the summer.!!!!!
Those Ice-blocks are still in the freezers at Pare. I’ve no doubt that the extreme heat they were forced to endure caused much of the violence at Pare that has occurred there over the summers.
Prisoners at Waikeria did get their ice-blocks and cold water because I found out about it and made sure the guards there gave them out..[reluctantly in many cases and complaining about “why should bloody crims get ice-blocks”. I passed the word on and prisoners in many of the other prisons also managed to get them.
Mt Eden gave out ice-blocks and water bottles 2 times a day .. which shows how hot it was there. They carried out Corrections Head Office instructions.
The question for Operational Matter Davis is:
“why was no action taken to ensure that staff carried out orders on a matter that affected prisoner health and safety”.
And:
“why has no one been held accountable for this refusal to obey orders”.
“Are Pare guards free to choose which orders they will obey??”
Arthur Taylor is TDBs prisoner rights blogger who has taken the Government and won on numerous occasions. He has been released from prison.
The real scandal is that foreign residents are able to vote in No Zealand elections, while No Zealand prisoners are not; I wonder how that skews electoral outcomes in favour of the propertied class?
+1 Castro, Yep something unjust when someone born in NZ can not vote, while people who spend as little as 11 days in the country get citizenship (and then their kids and relatives can piggly back off it and claim citizenship too) and voting rights (as well as free welfare for the family) and that is influencing and will influence a great deal what sort of country NZ become in the future.
NZ is very attractive to satellite families and new residents who may know little to nothing about NZ and not planning to stay either as they already have multiple passports, but get the same rights as those native to the country with only one place to live!
Something’s wrong with government if they think that is acceptable and very disappointing they did not repeal the prison voting and put in place at least 10 years of continuous residency in NZ as adults before anyone can think of getting a vote here and influencing NZ politics!
Even if they just repeal Quinn’s mean-spirited “look-at-me-I’m actually-doing something” legislation as a start.
There really are quite a few simple things this coalition could be doing that’d build up a bit of political capital.
Quinn always was a bit of a tit going back to the days of the Maori Development Commissions where all he ever did was steal TPK policy analysis and change a few words and phrases and pass it off as his own.
Thank you for restoring balance here, SAVENZ .
As always you do.
Well reasoned .
Truth these neo liberal crap govt’s WANT to hand out the lollies because they want CHEAP LABOUR.
They know full well that the 650,0000 ( old figures now ) ex pat New Zealanders now living in Australia with no intention whatsoever of coming home need to be replaced – preferably with people from poor county’s that have no real knowledge of TRADE UNIONISM.
Thus those people who pay their bosses to work- to get their visa’s , get their vote and bugger off to Australia the first chance they get. Bring all their old folk here who have never paid a cents tax in their lives towards superannuation , draw on their pension from overseas being dual citizens and collect the NZ pension, vote for what suits their needs best and f@ck the New Zealanders.
Well its time it stopped.
And you know what?
Its not their fault.
Its the fault of these shitty neo liberal govt’s we’ve voted in since 1984 and the people who voted for them. And behind it all as well as the over-stressed housing markets?- are the RICHLISTERS !!!!
And behind them are all the followers searching under the table for the crumbs. Sickening.
thats a very good point Castro its not right foreigners can vote here and not our own people
Yeah , Castro- you annoy me at the best of times but you’ve got a good point.
A VERY good point.
Oh boohoo, poor prisoners. If only there was some way to stay out of prison and not be in that situation hmm…
Idiot.
Idiot.
On a related topic, this is seriously worthy of a post as absolutely destructive and travesty of justice.
“Pre-sentencing reports for offenders criticised by judges and lawyers”
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/387988/pre-sentencing-reports-for-offenders-criticised-by-judges-and-lawyers
It is totally true and absolutely needs reform.
This is also why so many Maori are going to prison aka believe it or not, the person who writes the probation reports often et’s the person’s criminal history wrong and copy and paste someones else’s criminal history.
So for someone with the same name, in particular Maori a REAL issue in particular as so many iwi have the same surname!
Maybe a significant factor in why Maori are so over represented in prison when they are being presented as hardened criminals because probation put in faulty information due to laziness and a lack of justice in our justice system, in their pre sentencing reports!!!
Also Maori are more likely to have a legal aid representation with lawyers who don’t know the alleged offenders history very well and then the probation mistakes are not corrected or it’s corrected at the last minute prejudicing the sentencing!!!
It’s also not just the probation officers. Sometimes this is happening with the police prior to charging an offender, who bring up the wrong record with same name and then go after some completely minor infraction like the devil believing they are dealing with some serious serial offender with the same name, which might not be the same person!
It snowballs out of control with the person then being charged harder in the first place than they deserve. Then the injustice continues, as the person being charged then gets the wrong criminal history added to their pre sentencing report!
Added to the injustice is that the probation officers often do not get the reports out in the right time frames so that the lawyers can’t check the information with their clients in the time frames given!
This issue is a major problem in NZ, and an absolutely travesty of justice that can set off some young offenders with very minor offending into the prison system and wreck their lives with a criminal record and maximum penalty they should never have got, due to systematic errors!
God knows how many people are rotting in prison who shouldn’t be, or forced into a life of crime, with sentencing much harsher than they should have got, due to errors in our justice system.
Clean it up!!!
There should be a investigation given to see how many people in jail for relatively minor crimes had faulty pre sentencing reports!!!
My guess a lot!
thats a very good point Castro its not right foreigners can vote here and not our own people
Sounds like many of you haven’t been to court its one of the most racist discriminative unbalanced places in our country where if you have no money for a good lawyer then your fucked and the legal aid lawyers are usually pretty crappy and don’t care no one wants to do these cases the justice system is a fast/joke it needs to change its based on monocultural and legal jargon no wonder so many of our Maori people are behind bars with a system like the one we have.
If you stop and look past the bright lights and pretty colors, the real problem here is under-staffing in jails.
I have no doubt that cells are hot, stuffy places to be given they’re little more than a box with a window at one end and no natural ventilation.
If prisoners aren’t forced to be in them during the hottest part of the day then the problem is mostly mitigated.
The fact that prisoners are locked up for 23 hours in the day comes down to under-staffing.
There is a ratio of staff to prisoners which must be on deck when they are unlocked. I think it is something like one staff member per 30 inmates.
Ergo if you have a 60 bed unit unlocked you must have at least two staff members on duty – in many cases there is only one, and often none. I am aware of situations where one staff member works between several units.
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