So the SERCO fight clubs were weekly?
Instead of an All Black having sex in a toilet, might the PM offer a comment on weekly fight clubs in his private prison?
Revealed: New report says weekly fight clubs at Mt Eden Prison
Serco’s failings at Mt Eden Correctional Facility have been laid bare in a damning report, which reveals weekly “fight clubs”, “freely available” drugs and cellphones smuggled in by prison staff, and negligent guards who may have missed violent behaviour because they were playing table tennis and pool within the jail.
The Corrections chief inspector’s report, released this morning, also revealed that inmates at the remand prison went unsupervised in unlocked cells for up to two and a half hours, partly because of a rostering system which wrongly said people were on duty when they were sometimes on leave or had resigned.
Well, well, well, and what does SERCO have to say about lying and taking millions for a prison system that made Mad Max look like progressive prison policy?
Serco’s Asia Pacific chief executive Mark Irwin said this morning that the company had accepted all of the inspector’s recommendations “in full”.
He also apologised for the company’s performance at the prison.
“In 2015 certain important areas of service delivery fell below levels which our customer, the Department of Corrections, the Minister of Corrections and the people of New Zealand had a right to expect, and for that, we are truly sorry.”
“Important lessons have been learnt, and we have paid the Crown $8m recognising this and the costs incurred by the Department in taking over the management of the prison in July 2015.”
Irwin said MECF was a “very challenging” prison to manage.
As the chief inspector observed in his report, the jail had a large proportion of high-risk prisoners, and high turnover as the result of its large remand population.
Serco said MECF had “performed well” from the beginning of its contract in 2010 until 2014, lowering the rates of self-harm and violence.
What a load of horse hit! Do they think we are stupid and don’t have memories longer than 3 months? If SERCO are really this sorry why did they go to the High Court last year to try and censor the very report they are now so sorry about?
They got caught lying, they manipulated the truth, hid what they knew about prisoner abuse and when a watered down report was finally presented, they took it to the High Court to try and hide what they did.
And then after all that, they said sorry.
Seeing as the current news cycle is now being dominated by the media sending cameras into the very bathroom an All Black had sex in, I’d say this is likely to be ignored.
Well said Martyn!! Classic “Don’t look here, look over there!” I despair with msm in this country playing its part in dumbing Kiwis down.
How is SERCO still able to operate a prison in this country? Their mishandling of Mt Eden jail is massive, complete incompetence and a gigantic dereliction of duty.
And that does not even begin to address the extremely dubious statistics they were pumping out falsely showing they where meeting or exceeding all required targets. They surely lied about their ability to do the job they said they could.
The next question in this failed venture is how and why National did a deal with such an incompetent organisation.
And then why the profit oriented jail experiment is even continuing!
Of course National voters won’t give a shit but by any measure this is very bad for this government.
I think we already knew this before this report came out. The matter appears to have been considered as “dealt with” by the MSM, so they move on to more frivolous news reporting, and trivia, as usual. But both main TV channels here did offer a brief report in their 6pm news, with Judith Collins prominent again in her damage control function.
I cannot imagine that a prisoner would come out of prison a better person, or better for the community for that matter, from being involved in fight clubs.
Welcome to John Keys ‘ brighter future’.
To quote :
TAKERE says:
OCTOBER 6, 2016 AT 6:22 PM
” Another PPP (Public Private Partnership) failure! A fuck’n expensive one too. 25yr contract worth more than $250,000.00.
When are kiwi’s going to realise that the private sector are no better or more efficient at running enterprise’s. Its a myth.
Cancel the contract. Reinvest the money back into Corrections and run the prison facility better, as before a NACTMPU Government.”
Cancel the contract !!!
Now !!!
You obviously have no idea about prison Dave
so you like the idea of fight clubs?
Lack of rehabilitation adds up to more clients. Serco’s programme for increasing prison inates numbers and profit – if we let them which NACT is and covering for them.
Let’s not forget that SERCO’s apalling behaviour was aided and abetted by Corrections. They KNEW what was going on!!