PRISON WRECKED IN 32-HOUR MUTINY

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30809, 22 July 1965, Page 1

PRISON WRECKED IN 32-HOUR MUTINY

Damage Could Be As High As £250,000

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, July 21. The Auckland prison mutiny ended at 10.45 a.m. today with the maximum security institution an uninhabitable wreck and prison accommodation throughout the country at breaking point to absorb the displaced criminals. The Minister of Justice (Mr Hanan) said tonight that damage by the rioting prisoners could be as high as £250,000.

All 293 of the prison’s population, including 22 “lifers” and 34 men sentenced to preventive detention, are accounted for and in custody, but the revolver from which shots were fired during the 32-hour riot is missing. Prison and Railways Department buses and R.N.Z.A.F. aircraft were used to disperse the prisoners to prisons in both the North and South Islands, but the worst security risks are being temporarily held under close guard in the cells at the Auckland Central Police Station.

The rioters completed their catalogue of destruction at 6.15 a.m. today when they fired and gutted the kitchen and bakehouse in the prison basement. Within two hours “some of them” were making approaches to prison officials and police to negotiate surrender terms. But the Director of Prisons (Mr I. J. D. McKay) flatly refused to discuss terms.

At 8.45 a.m. the prisoners assembled in the main exercise yard, where many of them spent a miserable night between showers, and were harangued by Ronald John Jorgenson, a convicted murderer.

Only fragments of his- remarks could be heard beyond the east wall but the impression among officials was that Jorgensen was encouraging the men to surrender. At 9.15 a.m. most of the 228 men left inside were surrendering. but it was thought that a hard core of a dozen or so convicts were barricading themselves to stay 1 ehind and hold out

At this time Mr E. G. Buckley, the prison superintendent, reported that “about 50 hoodlums” were in the compound smashing and burning the little furniture and plant left. Surrendering prisoners were taken in small groups, stood against a wall, and searched for weapons before being dispersed in the small remand yards. Prison officials with trays of hot steak pies entered the prison with “breakfast’' for the inmates and soon after 10.30 a.m the main compound was empty The revolt had crumpled —32 hours and 20 minutes

after two masked prisoners had attacked a warder and released their fellow-prison-ers. Within minutes Mr Hanan and the Secretary for Justice (Dr. J. L. Robson) wc e at the prison gates being briefed by Messrs McKay and Buckley. With the District Commissioner of Works, Mr ’. W. McKinnon, and Detective

. Chief Inspector R. J. Walton, . they entered the prison for I a brief survey. Mr McKay later returned , and at Mr Hanan’s behest int vited reporters and photographers to see the wreckage. 5 the tension and uncertainty were over, but armed police, j infantry with fixed bayonets. ; Special Air Service troopers, j and police dogs maint 'ned their vigiiance. f Firemen who inspected the e cell blocks found that many r cells had been systematically r looted and burned during the I night. “They must have gone along 1 throwing burning material s into each cell and having a

great time,” said the Chief Fire Officer (Mr L. F. Wilson). He believes the prisoners used fat from the gaol kitchen to intensify the fire which burned out the kitchen, bakehouse and bedding store just after 6.15 a.m. A scene of devastation and ruin confronted officials as daylight filtered through the smoke clouds drifting through the roofless structure. From the blackened walls and scorched masonry, water from fire hoses cascaded on to gallery floors inches deep in a rubble of charred wood, broken pipes, wiring, smashed furniture, roofing iron and hundreds of sodden books. The asphalt surface of the main exercise yard was littered. Mattresses, paper, utensils, smashed furniture, and food were piled in heaps among the smoke of a dozen fires. Four tubular steel chairs supported a large window grille which had been used as a barbecue. A bass fiddle lay on its back, broken, radios lay smashed and burned, and skeins of recording tape were strewn about. Asked who would clean up the ..less Mr Buckley replied grimly: “They will.” True to his word, a gang of inmates spent the afternoon wielding brooms to help firemen clean out the north wing extension to make it habitable for the prisoners required to remain behind overnight.