Security role questioned

Press, 17 April 1982, Page 4

Security role questioned

Sunnyside Hospital had struggled for 10 years to have a complex that was open, and now the Justice Department was proposing to enclose it again, the medical superintendent-in-chief of the North Canterbury Hospital Board. Dr R. A. Fairgray. has said. He was speaking at a meeting of the board’s health services committee during consideration of a report on psychiatrically disturbed prison inmates and persons remanded to the custody of psychiatric institutions under Section 42 or 43 of the Crimes Act. Dr Fairgray made submissions on the report, which the committee agreed should be sent to the Justice Department. Dr Fairgray said he agreed with a statement by another member of the committee. Mrs Judy Waters, that Paparua Prison would be a better place than Sunnyside Hospital to have a highsecurity villa for such patients. In his submissions, Dr Fairgray said that the general conclusions of the report seemed reasonable. Of particular interest was the statement that “remandees are remanded to psychiatric hospitals too readily.”

"But I am concerned with the recommendation that the North Canterbury Hospital Board should be required, like other hospital boards, to have suitable facilities capable of holding remandees detained under certain sections of the act,” he said. "Such a directive could only be implemented if and when appropriate funding for facilities and staff was provided.” Dr Fairgray quoted a section of the report which said “that there is no facility in the South Island capable of accommodating high-security-risk, disturbed prisoners on a long-term

basis." While it was not suggested that actual facilities be created in the South Island, the report did say that hospitals must be prepared to accept severely psychiatrically disturbed prisoners on transfer, he said. "Such facilities are essential to the working of New Zealand's penal system, but I am not sure that the Health vote should pay for them,” Dr Fairgray said. The committee's chairman, Mrs L. C. Gardiner, said that the report was an example of how hospital boards were once again being directed to do certain things with no idea where the resources or funding were coming from. Dr Fairgray said in his submissions he agreed with the report that it was desirable to have a national policy on the care of psychiatrically disturbed prisoners and persons on remand but to have a policy required adequate funding to ensure that it could be implemented.