Murdered for a text message: Our new Prison Empire built on shoplifters
Jesus wept.
Murdered for sending a text…
Two-and-a-half weeks after he attempted to murder a stranger at an Auckland bus stop – leaving the victim unconscious in a pool of blood, with injuries so severe he was left partially blind – Siitia Junior Falesefulu was assigned to share a cell with someone in custody for a text message.
Corrections officers would later find Falesefulu, who had a long history of psychosis, resting on the top bunk with his hands and clothes covered in the other man’s blood.
The cellmate, 46-year-old Robert Fitzpatrick, had been beaten to death. Staff at Mt Eden Corrections Facility only discovered the grisly scene after an inmate in a nearby cell reported seeing blood seeping from underneath the door.
NZ Herald
…so much to unpack.
Why was someone who had shown such a level of violence double bunked with someone who shouldn’t have been in prison in the first place?
Sending a man to jail for a text message?
Have we got so much room in our prison system and so hyper sensitive to the feelings of victims that we can put people in prison for text messages?
We are building a new Prison Empire with Shoplifters, tough sentences and
The Government’s tougher theft laws are expected to add roughly 245 people to the prison population within five years, while Justice Ministry projections show the overall prison population climbing 35% — from 11,240 in 2026 to about 15,200 by 2036 — partly as a result of recent tougher sentencing and criminal-law changes.
New Zealand doesn’t need a crime wave to produce a prison boom. The Government has changed sentencing and theft laws so that more offenders can be imprisoned and sentences can be longer. Even theft worth $2,000 or less now carries up to a year in prison, compared with three months previously.
In the words of the Ministry of Justice when responding to the Sentencing Reform Act and Crimes Amendment:, “more people will receive prison sentences, and for longer terms.”
Why ram people into an underfunded prison network for being homeless or shoplifting or needlessly punitive sentences?
Only an underfunded prison network would put a violent psychopath in with someone imprisoned for sending a text message.
In NZ, we don’t want justice, we want suffering.
Crime porn clickbait enrages us at the injustice of violence, we bay for blood and Politicians provide the get tough on crime Lynch mob.
Redemption and the attempt at rehabilitation are weak when we want punishment.
We are building a prison empire of petty thieves and pettier criminals and they will feed the angrier violence of institutionalised monsters.
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Good old Judith Collins. It was her policy to cut costs by double bunking prisoners.
She was warned at the time the consequences of this policy and there have been numerous examples of physical and sexual violence meted out to often young or non hardened criminals who will have been deliberately placed in a cell with guys like Falesefulu who due to his recent dangerous offending would mean he is detained and isolated in his own cell.
In these conditions anyone who is new or a minor offender to the corrections system and the inherent dangers to their own life are right to be very afraid of what awaits them in custody.
This atrocious case highlights again our total disregard for human life and the many who are expendable in the hands of evil mercenary politicians , their profit margin and the prison industrial complex.
We need a register of the deaths that occur due to lack of funding safeguards and the dangerous level of unaccountability. And are a direct cause of government failure.
Now now it won’t all be shoplifters, now they’ve got the ‘stalking’ law the pigs can just lock people up for making light of notorious ‘Free Speech Union’ grifters.
Apparently three murders in the past year or so in Mt Eden. People who go to jail should not be sentenced to roll the dice of getting fucking murdered, particularly non violent criminals. Its outrageous incompetence. This should be huge news. The poor family of that victim.
Heads should fucking roll.
I’m all for heavy punishments for criminals who commit horrendous acts of unprovoked violence and rapists, but its ridiculous jailing people for crimes that are not a physical threat to people (except for serious white collar crime which really hurts people).
Problem with NZ there is no accountability for fuckups like this, there is a culture of not holding people to account —look at the engineer who designed the CTV, Pike River, and many other examples.
Does health and safety not apply to the prison services? I would have thought that MBIE should have been involved with something like this as whoever made the decision to put them in the same cell made a very bad mistake.