Prison officers fear rioting

Press, 1 June 1989, Page 1

Prison officers fear rioting

By

GLEN PERKINSON

Overcrowding and abysmal conditions at Paparua Prison have brought tension close to flashpoint, prison officers say.

They have spoken out because they fear it is only a matter of time before inmates riot. To bring the seriousness of the situation to the public’s attention they have invited the news media to the prison today to inspect conditions they describe as “horrendous.” The Government must realise that Christchurch needs a new, modern prison immediately, a spokesman said yesterday. The officers say Paparua has 120 more prisoners than it can cope with. The Christchurch Prisons’ assistant superintendent, Mr Ray Wiley, said Paparua was within its capacity of 464. Last evening it housed 452 inmates.

A spokeswoman for the Catholic prison chaplains, Mrs Mary Kamo, said last evening that wherever prisons were crowded “you get a potentially dangerous situation.”

“When prisoners are in Bastille-like conditions with more than one to a cell, frustrations grow.” Paparua prisoners were denied their daily rights, she alleged. Often they were locked in cells for many hours each day without exercise or the opportunity to do work.

In some cases prisoners may be going without water, she said.

"That is a potential for trouble. Prison officers are going to be the first ones at risk in a situation like that.”

The officers’ representative, the Public Service Association, says in spite of their concern the officers were not planning industrial action yet. Mr John McKenzie, the P.S.A.’s Canterbury regional secretary, confirmed the officers’ worries.

“There could be a flashpoint any day,” he said. Another damning report on Addington Prison has been made public labelling it the worst in New Zealand. The report alleges that the remand prison breaches at least 11 United Nations human

rights convention conditions every day. The report’s authors say the continual breaches highlight the Government’s hypocrisy over prisoners’ rights. The Government is a party to the United Nations’ Declaration on Human Rights, article five of which stipulates minimum conditions for prisoners. The Government is also a signatory to the International. Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. That document, adopted by the United Nations, has similar aims to the declaration.

The report, produced by seven rights groups, calls Addington the country’s most “inhumane” prison. Conditions there are significantly worse than at Auckland’s old and crowded Mount Eden Prison, it says.

It calls for the demolition of both prisons, but puts emphasis on Addington, which it says is "irreformable.”

The Government should provide alternative adequate remand facilities with a “strong emphasis on medical, spiritual and psychiatric assessment and treatment ... as a matter of priority,” it says. The' report is the second this year to demand the prison’s demolition. In March Christchurch prison chaplains joined a long list of damning judgments about Addington’s adequacy.

Prison officers and the Minister of Justice, Mr Palmer, deny the conditions are inhumane. Mr Palmer said yesterday that much money was spent keeping New Zealand’s prisons up to standard. He said he had seen much worse overseas. Addington would be shut but not for at least two years. Mr Palmer said some of the claims about the prison had been extravagant. Mr Wiley denied the charge about inhumane conditions. The report says some prisoners have been kept at Addington awaiting trial for up to eight months.

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