Source: Radio New Zealand
Corrections chief executive Jeremy Lightfoot. RNZ / Diego Opatowski
A High Court judge has ordered the Department of Corrections boss to obey the law or face contempt of court proceedings if he fails to make sure prisoners aren’t let out of their cells for an hour every day.
Under New Zealand law, prisoners are entitled to at least one hour of physical exercise a day. The rights are further enshrined in United Nations standards.
In his judgement released this week, Wellington High Court Justice Jason McHerron found some inmates in Auckland Prison, the country’s only maximum security prison, weren’t allowed out of their cell for the minimum required period and was holding the Corrections chief executive Jeremy Lightfoot personally accountable.
Wellington human rights lawyer, Amanda Hill represented some of the prisoners and said time outside of cells was vital.
“Moving your limbs, getting your heart rate up a little bit, talking to other people, those are things that we take for granted, but they’re pretty vital to just being able to function,” she said.
“If we don’t have that, we can get into a position of what’s called prolonged solitary confinement which is unlawful, and it has lots of physical and mental health effects, paranoia, aggression, depression, anxiety, joint pain, migraines – the list is really long.”
No one knows that better than this man, who RNZ isn’t naming, but who spent five years in prison for aggravated robbery among other charges.
“The 23 hours we’re locked down for, we actually look forward to our hour every day,” he said.
“Some people get an hour, some people don’t. The ones that don’t get their hour, it turns pretty violent, it gets real frustrating in the mind, it’s bad enough we get 23 hours locked down.”
He said an hour wasn’t a lot of time.
“Majority of the time, the whole hour is spent on training,” he said.
“Maybe like 10 minutes out of that hour on a phone call, maybe 20, but you’re only allocated for so much time, and hour is not much.”
Hill wanted to see Corrections follow the court’s order.
“We’re really hoping that this is the thing that they choose to comply with because nothing else to date has been enough.”
It would be an extraordinary situation to have a chief executive of one of the countries major departments before the courts facing a fine or even imprisonment, she said.
“This has been raised for coming up 10 years in different forums, the ombudsman’s raised it, the prison inspectors raised it, there’s been litigation about it, and the department has ignored the High Court’s directions in other cases that short staffing and resources aren’t a reason to deny minimum entitlement,” Hill said.
Corrections had argued a lack of staff and facilities prevented them opening cells safely. However, that was rejected by Justice McHerron.
Commissioner of custodial services, Leigh Marsh, said they had been working to meet the court’s order.
“We’ve been doing work in that environment to ensure that we are able to dynamically increase the staff, so I’ve increased the base number of staff in there immediately, to reduce the risk of the inability to do simultaneous unlocks,” he said.
“We’ve really focused hard on being really careful with these separations to make sure that we’re getting it right.”
Marsh said safety was a priority as they balanced complex circumstances.
“We’re really focusing on our staff and prisoner safety, so I am not holding back, if a prisoner is exhibiting violence, for them to be shifted into a maximum security environment,” he said.
“We’re seeing that increased gang complexity, we’re seeing that increased complexity around impulse control, and the propensity towards using violence when tension or conflict arises among the prison population that’s in there.”
Former Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier said the court’s ruling went further than he could have done in his former role.
“The chief ombudsman can recommend,” he said.
“If there’s a failure to comply with the recommendation, there’s no real ability for the ombudsman to do much about this.
“But this [judgement] has the consequence of failure and accountability, which could result, interestingly enough and ironically, in imprisonment, therefore loss of liberty.”
Boshier said Corrections had been slow to comply in the past.
“Corrections is like a 19th century coal-fired ocean liner attempting to alter course, it’s very slow to correct, another way of putting it could’ve been it’s glacial,” he said.
“It’s just Corrections that I found utter frustration with for its inability to change and its willingness to think of every reason under the sun why it should not.”
A group of 69 prisoners have filed a wide-ranging claim against the Attorney General, on behalf of Corrections. The matter was heading to trial in 2027.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
