There is an obligation on those running our prisons to ensure everything possible is done to keep prisoners safe, while maintaining their human rights.
Taffy Hotene would probably hate the fact that his death at Wanganui Prison has actually led to an improvement in the correctional facility's systems.
But an inquest into
the death of Hotene, whose body was found at the prison in November 2009, has turned up a raft of issues, in turn leading to a new policy for keeping accurate records of all inmates' movements behind bars.
During the inquest, which finished in Palmerston North this week, Department of Corrections inspector Niuia Aumua said he found "significant shortcomings" in the way records had been kept by prison officers at Wanganui Prison.
He said unit records had not correlated with the number of inmates.
On the day Hotene died, there had been an error in forms not being filled in to ascertain where prisoners were.
Since Hotene died, there has been a national review of all prison systems and a security upgrade relating to musters.
The prison environment inevitably presents its own unique set of problems.
Those that populate our prisons are there because they broke the rules, so it's not entirely surprising that there will be a few issues when you put these sorts of people together under one roof.
Aside from his family, there are likely to be few people who mourned Hotene.
The 39-year-old had received an 18-year non-parole sentence for murdering journalist Kylie Jones and preventative detention for raping her.
But a death behind bars is still a subversion of the justice process - with Hotene's death, a punitive term has been left incomplete.
There is an obligation on those running our prisons to ensure everything possible is done to keep prisoners safe, while maintaining their human rights. In death, Taffy Hotene may have unwittingly helped contribute towards ensuring that obligation is met.
