‘Disruptive’ prisoners at Paremoremo segregated

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33083, 25 November 1972, Page 2

‘Disruptive’ prisoners at Paremoremo segregated

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, November 24. A total of 26 prisoners in Paremoremo Prison have been isolated from others in the institution after fires, threats of violence, and the escape attempt by Mervyn Anthony Rich more than a week ago.

They are in D block or the classification block. The trouble began in September, when the prisoners signed a petition wanting to grow beards or moustaches, and to be allowed to wear their hair longer than the regulation length. The first disturbance was when prisoners went oa a rampage in one of the stores, shredding 40 pairs of white shirts and trousers, which they wear when receiving visitors.

The prison superintendent (Mr J. Hobson) said this coincided with his absence from the prison. On September 13 practically every inmate signed a petition asking to be allowed to grow beards and monsTaetux; Mr Hobson said he told the prisoners that he would put it tn the prison superintendents’ conference two weeks

later, but while he was away they started a go-slow in one of the workshops. The conference denied the request from the prisoners, as ail prison regulations were under review by the Justice Department At this stage it was estimated that about 25 of the 150 prisoners were causing all the trouble. Those who had been confined to the D block and classification blocks after the June trouble had been sent back into the normal cell blocks. The culmination of this trouble was the attempted escape by Rich, after which the prison was searched and about 22 men were segregated.

Mr Hobson produced a spiked knuckleduster and six knives, which had been made in the shops and been found in the search. One of the items confiscated was a shaver which

would not woric. Inside it a prison officer found S3O in $lO notes. Another prisoner had a butcher’s hook hidden in his pillow. He barricaded himself in his cell, and when the prison officers got inside he attacked them with a chair. “In C block we found 14 gallons of home brew in a false ceiling,” Mr Hobson said. About this time Mr Hobson said, he heard a rumour of an underground newspaper to be produced in the prison. Prison officers intercepted a coded letter from one prisoner to another, and were able to squash the scheme.

Movement from one cell block to another had also been banned, as it was known ; for certain that prisoners i from different blocks had helped in the attempted escape by Rich. Since then there had been no trouble and production in the work-

i shops had more than doubled, i The small minority of prisoners were disruptive, rei tarded the progress of other I inmates, and were antii social, Mr Hobson said. One i had already assaulted two officers, and had no intention of reforming. Another had attempted to kill himself three times—once by strangulation, another time by incineration, and again by trying to slash his wrists.