This is extremely grim reading…
‘Disconnection at all levels’: Ombudsman’s scathing review of Corrections
Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier has issued a blistering critique of the Department of Corrections’ top brass, who he says are failing to drive meaningful progress.
Boshier started an investigation into management at Corrections, after the 2020 Waikeria Prison riot. He said it became clear that previous recommendations for change at Corrections had not been actioned, and so investigated management and culture within the department.
“Waikeria was one of many prisons I had inspected over a number of years where despite countless recommendations for change by both me and other oversight agencies, the same issues kept coming up, again and again,” he said.
He said Corrections’ senior leaders knew what needed to be done, but had not ensured any improvements were made to the conditions of prisons.
…look, I appreciate that many of you are frightened and angry by the post covid crime wave that is hitting us, just as it is in Australia, UK, Canada and America. The sacrifice of Covid was unequally shared in an unequal society and those distortions are manifesting now.
I appreciate for some of you frightened and angry Volk that some seem to get a tiny bit of sexual fission out of not only incarcerating someone, but wanting to make them suffer a bit too eh?
Like the way some of you thirst for the suffering of someone being punished beyond losing their liberty borders on the fetish doesn’t it?
Like some esoteric revenge punishment fantasy?
I’m sure you’ll not have read whatever the Chief Ombudsman was complaining about, you are guessing he’s whinging about not getting enough culturally appropriate cuddles and hongi’s at night eh?
Probably.
He was probably complaining that Chippy himself isn’t coming down to the gates to personally welcome all the crime he’s letting out with maps to all the Michael Hill Jewellers located around the city eh?
Some wet liberal wank eh?
Except he wasn’t.
Except he was giving a final clarion call of a warning that the current system is so busted, so broken that the basics of living inside the prison are in critical meltdown.
Do you understand what he’s saying here?
He said there needed to be a greater focus on ensuring basic human rights for prisoners, with poor conditions in the prisons making it more dangerous for staff and prisoners as tensions rose.
The living conditions become so squalid that the prisoners will revolt and you will spark prison riots!
That’s what happened at the Waikeria prison riot! The living conditions, even for a prison, became so run down and inoperable that it collapsed.
He said the riot at Waikeria prison was fuelled, in part, due to the poor living conditions and human rights abuses at prison.
“Those issues included unreasonable lock up hours, a lack of privacy in toilet and shower areas, and, in the case of Waikeria, decrepit conditions in its high security areas,” he said.
In previous reports about Waikeria, Boshier said he had highlighted those concerns and they had been accepted by Corrections. Yet he said there hadn’t been much, if any, progress to addressing these issues.
“This troubled me so much that I felt a deep dive was necessary to understand why the department hasn’t been able to make meaningful and long-lasting change,” he said.
National and ACT if elected want to plough thousands more people into our broken and dysfunctional Prison Empire with zero costings and no way to fund the enormous spike in the Prison population they are about to embark us upon.
Watch for the calls to privatise the prison system.
An underfunded, violent and corrupt prison system will only produce more damaged men. Is your need for vengeance so blinding?
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Martyn – Solution…build another prison to house the 501s…
What an ignorant reply.
How is building more prisons going to fix the problem, as Martyn rightly says “an underfunded, violent and corrupt prison system will only produce more damaged men”
I’m assuming you supported the like of the Sensible Sentencing Trust? Look at the damage they did and here we have two political parties want to reimplement their policies!
Wake up the!
“How is building more prisons going to fix the problem”
The only alternative is renovation.
Import some more prison guards and white collar criminals. Sorted.
Nah ya white collar criminal who the establishment respects will complain and probably get there way.. The system could never have that. I think fewer while collars are locked up now.
One of the first thinks Labour did 6 years ago was halt tge building of a new prison. The reason was they said they would reduce prison numbers .The reduction is one of the few promises they have kept but unfortunately they have not reduced crime but have reduced the concequences of the crime. Well run and well resourced prisons can achieve a good outcome which is certainly not the case at the moment .With the corrections minister being Kelvin Davies why are we surprised of the dire situation they are in
They cancelled it and almost immediately the prisons where shown to be inhumane.
So much for kindness.
Trevor With the Minister for Children being Kelvin Davis, why are we not surprised that the Commissioner for Children got kneecapped? Here’s hoping that they don’t try to silence the Office of the Ombudsman also. He needs to keep away from the Parliamentary precinct and Albert Park for a start.
I see the much vaunted KFC diplomacy with the kids has encouraged more kids to play up.
Not predictable or anything.
Next they’ll give them 2.8 million dollars.
But where are they KCCO? That’s what was so stupid about Seymours comment. He talked about escaping and no consequences in the same post! What a f’ing stupid thing to say. The need to escape doesn’t imply you faced no consequences for your actions now does it? Muppet.
So you would rather they get waterboarded them?
Not surprised, given that you want to string LGBT’s up with piano wire.
“The NZ Prison system is ripe to riot ………….. ”
Fear not @Martyn. We have a number of experts from the Old Cuntry, well-versed in cultural understandings in this space, going forward who are running the show – often parachuted in to show us the way.
None of them are to be trifled with. It should work out just fine. You’re such a pessimist!
(/sarc)
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were quite happy to allow Serco, Group Four Securicor and Sodexo to start taking over prisons. Ultimately the Third Way Liberals want to privatise nearly everything (including schools), which is part of the reason they are now trying to hide behind ‘woke’ distractions.
The Waikeria Prison was Rioted while it was managed by the Dept of Corrections (if that’s still their name) so how did that happen?
Nathan I think your thinking is uneducated and here is why.
Building more prisons will lock more people up but currently and for years, our prison system has failed the very people it was designed to help.
Do you realise that the human bill of rights act, gives prisoners the right to be treated humanly and to be given rehabilitation. The corrections act is being breeched every day by corrections employees and this country is liable for that.
I am picking in a prison riot Seymour, as part of the government of the day, would be forced back track and air drop KFC into the complex. He’ll be quoted as saying “f**k it, give ‘‘em a bucket”
Decriminalise all drugs and introduce a basic living wage while crushing the four foreign owned banks to enable their obscene net profits be returned back to our societies then investigate just HOW there are 14 Kiwi-As multi-billionaires and 3118 multi-millionaires with a minimum of $50 mil each gleaned from within a small agrarian economy with a total population of a mere 5.2 million. There will always be nuts within societies but mostly, people become criminals because all else has failed them. Prisons are places of torture where it can be seen by an emotionally dismembered society believing they’re witnessing the logical fallacy that justice is being done. It’s no surprise, then, that Alexander Solzenitzen ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn ) was quoted as saying that criminals are the product of their society.
In short, and I’m not that short, the hyper rich here in Nu Zillind must terminally script the enduring notion that it isn’t them what does it to us, but us ourselves who’s what’s doing it.
Pleased to see you have conceded the election already Wheel.
Your pragmatism surprises me.
See that’s the problem Bob. Point out the idiocy and hypocrisy of National and the scary parts of Act and you are somehow a Labour supporter. I would consider myself fairly centrist but it’s just so depressing that the simple truth for the country seems to be you vote the government out not vote for a new vision or better government. I would love a tax cut but not at the expense of shit infrastructure and a bigger ambulance at the bottom of the cliff so an increasingly small number of people get their way.
Agreed about the dearth of vision in today’s political offerings- although to be fair ACT is offering a different approach to the current failed consensus. In my view Labour and Nats are two sides of the same mediocre coin and share equal responsibility for managing a gradual decline in our country by pretty much all yardsticks.
Ok Wheel not bad.
National started to import US style penal methods back in the late 1990’s. Plus both parties pursued this policy, and then handed over the running of prisons to the gangs, in the hope that allowing gang members and prospects to shank and rape weaker inmates will add a deterrent effect to our prison systems. Double bunking, as a way of allowing hardened criminals and gang members to gain access to weaker inmates to rape and bash is a key part of this. This was also the policy of the Sensible Sentencing Trust which has effectively written penal policy for both parties.
Evidence?
Are you serious millsy?
Yes. Mind you, a lot of people here condone torture, rape and assault on prisoners by other prisoners.