SEQUEL TO PRISON STRIKE Charges to be laid against 82 men

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32562, 23 March 1971, Page 2

SEQUEL TO PRISON STRIKE Charges to be laid against 82 men

(Sew Zealand Press Association)

<• AUCKLAND, March 22. Charges are being prepared against 82 inmates of Mount Eden Prison as a result of the riot on Saturday night, the prison superintendent (Mr J. Hobson) said today. The hearing will probably be held tomorrow.

; The senior Magistrate, Mr J. R. Drummond, would appoint two Magistrates for the inquiry, Mr Hobson said. “What usually happens is that the inmate is charged, makes his plea, and is asked if he has anything to say. If he pleads guilty, he is remanded for sentence.”

The prisoner shot during the riot is now in the Auckland Public Hospital. He was shot in the leg at a range of about 100 yards. Mr Hobson said that he belfeved the man was hit by a ricochet. The man was

serving four years on four charges of robbery. "He was one of the ring leaders,” Mr Hobson said. The man was now being guarded at the hospital by a prison warder. The superintendent said he felt justified in issuing firearms to his warders. “I was determined to confine the trouble to the yard and I had to consider the safety of the other 300 inmates. I was not going to have a repetition of the 1965 riot,” he said. Today, the prison was back to normal, said Mr Hobson. He’was unable to put a cost on'-the riot, but said that S2OO worth of glass was replaced on the kitchen windows and the $3OOO compressor was badly damaged. Inmates were still sweeping up in > the yard, and smokeblackened walls marked I where the fires were built. : ; Evacuation One of the fires lit by the prisoners endangered 23 inmates who had gone back to th£ir cells before the trouble, and they had to be moved. were pretty ‘hot* that the others were going to-Took them,” Mr Hobson said. “We’ve had co-opera-tidh from the other inmates in-leaning up, and they were n<T .trouble during the riot.” •Mr Hobson blamed over-

crowding for part of the trouble. “We have comfortable accommodation for 210. On Saturday we had 375 men, including 68 on remand, in the prison,” he said. No-one could be shifted until after the hearings, but 24 would be going to prison camps earlier than planned, to ease the situation. Wife’s view “It is just not good enough, the overcrowding, the tension, everything,” the wife of a Mount Eden Prison officer said today. For Mrs N. Marchant, Saturday’s riot was the second occasion when she had to “just sit home and wait,” not knowing what was happening inside the grey prison Her husband, Mr E. C. Marchant, who has been more than seven years in Mount Eden, was awarded the British Empire Medal for his part in helping to quell the 1965 riot. The 58-year-old officer, facing angry prisoners armed with a pistol and iron bars, succeeded in blasting his whistle to raise the alarm before being beaten to the ground

Hit by stone * On Saturday night he again tasted the anger of the inmates when he was struck by a stone which badly bruised his face and jaw and smashed his top denture. Recalled to the prison when the trouble flared up in the afternoon, Mr Marchant was injured while he and other officers played jets of water in the exercise area to try to contain the prisoners "Like the last time, I just had to sit here and wait It

was terrible, not knowing what was going on,” Mrs Marchant said today. “I have asked Ted to consider quitting the job, but he won’t. He retires, anyway, in two years.” she added. "The whole thing is that I am just an ordinary taxpayer with a family, and I cannot for the life of me understand why Mount Eden Prison is so crowded when millions of dollars have been spent on Paremoremo. “If the quarteri of the prisoners are overcrowded in any way, they get restless, and it’s the officers who have to bear this tension and sort things out,” she said. “This tension doesn’t stay at the prison. The men bring it home under these circumstances and the whole family feels it”