A justice of the peace who sentenced a prisoner to solitary confinement for faxing the ombudsmen should be banned from hearing prison disciplinary cases, says an inmates' representative.
Hilda Billington, an Upper Hutt city councillor and former deputy mayor, was stood down as a visiting justice at Rimutaka Prison while the High Court reviewed her decision.
The inmate, Brian Damien Hunter, had already served most of the solitary confinement by the time the court set aside Mrs Billington's sentence for "gross misconduct."
He had written to the Office of the Ombudsmen to get access to a computer to prepare documents for an appeal against his convictions for fraud and other matters.
A report commissioned by Associate Justice Minister Paul Swain last week from the president of the Beneficiaries Advocacy and Protection Society, Mike Dixon-McIvor, recommends that Mrs Billington's warrant as a visiting justice to the prison be withdrawn.
In the report, Mr Dixon-McIvor questions why Mrs Billington was removed from the list of justices to act at the Upper Hutt District Court but allowed to continue serving at prison disciplinary hearings.
"It is an impossible situation for the Minister of Corrections to retain Mrs Billington as an appointed visiting justice if she is not considered to be of the required standard for district court hearings."
The Corrections Department has acknowledged procedural irregularities in the disciplinary hearing.
The Minister of Corrections, Matt Robson, has asked officials from his department to give him a full briefing.
- NZPA
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