I’m no fan of Guyon Espiner but his journalism on the abuse of prisoners is some of the best of the year…
Corrections breaking the law by gassing prisoners with potent pepper spray, judge rules
Corrections has been breaking the law by gassing prisoners in their cells with a potent pepper spray called the Cell Buster, a High Court judge has ruled.
The Cell Buster, made by US company Sabre and marketed under the tagline ‘Making Grown Men Cry Since 1975’, involves hosing pepper spray into a closed cell to incapacitate the inmate.
It was used multiple times against Mihi Bassett and Karma Cripps at Auckland Women’s Prison in 2019 in what the District Court earlier ruled was cruel and degrading treatment designed to break their spirit.
On Thursday, the Wellington High Court Judge Rebecca Ellis ruled Corrections regulations in force between 2009 and 2021 failed to properly authorise the use of the Cell Buster pepper spray.
“The use of Cell Buster in prisons while those regulations were in force was also therefore unlawful.”
Justice Ellis ruled that Ministers of Corrections over those years did not have enough information to ensure the weapon could be used safely.
…how many times did we gas torture prisoners?
Justice Ellis made it clear the tactic concerned her.
“The notion of intentionally and remotely inflicting pain on a prisoner – a vulnerable person by definition – while locked in his or her cell is instinctively unpalatable,” she said.
“It is, perhaps, the ability to deploy Cell Buster in a more calculated and impersonal way – to inflict pain on a person who cannot escape, while observing their suffering from a safe distance – that has the potential to rob the process of its humanity and the prisoner of their inherent dignity.”
However, she said it was possible that in cases where a prisoner was armed or threatening to hurt others, using Cell Buster could be warranted and in those instances, it may be more humane than other tactical options.
Faced with the legal action, Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis got Cabinet approval for new Corrections regulations earlier this year in an attempt to ensure the use of Cell Buster was legal.
But Justice Ellis said the 2022 regulations were not put before her in this case “so I expressly make no formal findings about their lawfulness or otherwise”.
The Cell Buster was used 27 times in New Zealand prisons between 2016 and 2020.
…so after torturing 130 children with electricity, after buying and deploying sound cannons that can maim hearing, the State also gas tortured 27 prisoners illegally?
I’ve said it once, I’ll never stop saying it, the NZ State is the biggest abuser of human rights in this country.
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Its probably buried in Labour party policy under the heading, “Kindness!”
” I’ve said it once, I’ll never stop saying it, the NZ State is the biggest abuser of human rights in this country ”
Yes and Espineer is one of its enablers.
He never questioned the neo liberal corporate approach which encourages and creates this type of behaviour and has always actively like Gower and the newly marketed Duncan Garner who is all about the truth in the news according to the back of a bus ( I was behind while waiting for the lights to change ) and others have been paid to peddle bullshit and lies on behalf of the National party.
Then to remain relevant they cover some of the carnage that is endemic and worsened by the current corporate approach at all levels of this economy and implemented by Nat-Lab-ACT-Grn and Winston’s oldies.
Corrections is one of the most cruel and it is a fallacy that this country has legislation like human rights that only seems to create the illusion our rights are protected when in reality the country we have created and its systems regularly abuse what I would consider ” rights ” to those without the means to protect themselves.
While I have always argued that if you do the crime you do the time when you are incarcerated you are entitled to your human rights despite why you are inside in the first place and torture has no place in our correctional or mental health facilities.