Mount Albert council refuses permission for prison ward

Press, 18 December 1986, Page 8

Mount Albert council refuses permission for prison ward

Justice Department hopes for a ward for disturbed prisoners at Auckland’s Oakley Hospital have been dashed by a town-planning decision, and the Mental Health Foundation is worried about the consequences. The foundation’s deputy director, Dr Hilary Haines, says prisoners desperately need access to mental health care, and cites two suicides at the Paremoremo maximumsecurity prison in the last fortnight.

The Government wants to build a hospital near Paremoremo for disturbed inmates but that is still at the planning stage. In the meantime, it was hoped to convert Oakley’s ward 3M into a mediumsecurity prison, to fill the gap until the Paremoremo unit was ready. However, the Mount Albert City Council has refused to give planning permission for the prison at Oakley, and the Minister of Justice, Mr Palmer, has said the Government will not appeal.

He has asked instead for the planning for the Paremoremo unit to be speeded up. "I am disappointed that

the decision has gone against the application for the redesignation, but I do accept it,” he said.

“It means a delay in the provision of a facility which is seen as essential for the better management of the penal system and one which is urgently needed for the wider public good.” Mr Palmer spoke about the need for a special prison after the repeated sex offender, John Douglas Bennett, was sentenced in the High Court in October to preventive detention.

The sentencing judge, Mr Justice Holland, had said the Justice Department did not have an institution for sexual deviants and others who were not recommended for medical treatment, were not committable to a mental institution under the present legislation, but might need to be kept incarcerated for the rest of their lives in the interests of the public.

Mr Palmer said that for about the last 10 years psychiatrists had not regarded such people as insane, and they now had to be coped with by the

justice system rather than going to mental hospitals. The special prison planned for Auckland would provide treatment for such offenders.

The Mount Albert City Council planning committee recommended against changing Oakley from its present residential classification to allow for a penal institution. The council decided the site was unsuitable for a prison because of the residential nature of the neighbourhood and the proposed extension of a technical institute bordering the site, the “New Zealand Herald” reported.

Dr Haines believes the Government’s decision not to appeal is wrong. “An appeal may well have been successful because it would have been easy to show that community opposition to the plan was based on misinformation, prejudice, and unfounded fears,” she said.

The recent suicides in Paremoremo indicated that separate mental health facilities outside prisons were urgently needed. “Since about 1983, when

Oakley. Hospital virtually stopped admitting prisoners, the suicide rate in Paremoremo and Mount Eden prisons has shot up, from virtually none before 1983 to several each year now.

“The amount of selfmutilation, particularly with razor blades, has also increased dramatically.

“We also need to ask how it is that the Justice Department can justify conditions in facilities such as Paremoremo and Mount Eden prisons when these conditions have been shown to lead to breakdowns in the mental health of some prisoners. “A June, 1986, Justice Department report on Paremoremo said that the reason hospitalisation was so effective for mentally disturbed prisoners was not so much the treatment they received there but the fact that they were removed from an ‘unbearably stressful environment’.

“It is clear that the provision of a special hospital is not the only issue at stake. Something must also be done about the prison environment as a whole,” Dr Haines said.