50 years behind bars: Arsonist, 73, pleads with judge to help break cycle

Peter received electroconvulsive therapy at Lake Alice when he was just a boy. Photo / Mark Mitchell

A 73-year-old compulsive arsonist who has spent a combined 50 years in prison stood in front of a judge earlier this year and pleaded for rehabilitation services to be made available to him while inside. The man was sexually abused and electrocuted at Lake Alice and lived in a series of state homes. He doesn't know how to use a cellphone and, because of his history, he told the judge he can't help but reoffend. His story is sadly common for an ageing prison population who feel as if they're simply locked up and forgotten about, writes Jeremy Wilkinson.

"I remember the gag in my mouth, so I didn't shake off the table."

"When you come back from it, you have to be told where your bed is, where your seat is…you knew all that before the treatment, but when you come out you're just not quite right in the head."

Peter - not his real name - is describing electroconvulsive therapy while at Lake Alice psychiatric hospital. The electric shock treatment was often given as punishment and without anaesthetic.

Peter says it was like a light switch inside his brain. One moment he was fine, the next he had trouble remembering things and an inexplicable urge to set things on fire.

It was an urge that would lead him to set fire to one of the buildings at Lake Alice shortly after receiving his first dose and an urge that would plague him for the rest of his life.

Peter, 73, has spent nearly 50 years of his life behind bars.

Mostly he's been sent in for small stints for burglaries or for fires he's lit in rubbish bins or behind buildings.

But he says it only ever happens when he drinks.

The problem is, he says, is he drinks to drown out the memories of being sexually abused in state care, foster homes and prison.

"It just gives me a break I suppose," he tells Open Justice from inside prison. "It's just all a bit much for one person…it just gives me a few days off from thinking about it."

"Thank God I've never hurt anyone…I couldn't live with myself if I had.

"It's just not normal to do what I do."

In April, Peter appeared before the Palmerston North District Court charged with arson after he lit a roommate's book on fire at the halfway house he was staying at.

He was drunk at the time and smashed a window, cutting his arm in the process, and reached in to start the fire.

Peter claims he doesn't remember the incident, but pleaded guilty anyway and was handed a sentence of two years by Judge Lance Rowe, who said his hands were effectively tied because of Peter's extensive criminal history.

It's a history that canvases almost every District Court in the country spanning 130 convictions, 23 of them for arson, and beginning in 1968 with a charge of theft.

Seven years later he was charged with attempted murder in Dunedin after he'd tried to stab his sexually abusive foster father to death with a kitchen knife. The abuse at the hands of the state was the straw that broke the camel's back, he says, choosing to fight back for the first time.

Peter received electroconvulsive therapy at Lake Alice when he was just a boy. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Instead of claiming the man's life, the knife snapped and Peter injured himself.

He received five years' jail for the crime.

"Yours is a tragic and sad background, and I acknowledge that today. Your upbringing could only be described as dysfunctional," Judge Rowe said in his sentencing.

"You were physically abused by your mum, who was herself an alcoholic, you were abandoned when you were a child and placed in foster care from the age of 7. You were subjected to serious sexual abuse when placed in prison as a young man. You suffer mental illness, you have had placements in various psychiatric hospitals including Kingseat, Oakley and Lake Alice, where you were subjected to electric convulsive therapy sometimes as a form of punishment instead of treatment."

Rowe said Peter needed intensive and focused rehabilitative support in the community as he hadn't previously been capable of accessing therapeutic help long enough or consistently enough for it to make a difference.

"The sad reality... is that the entire picture when we put it all together demonstrates firstly, that in many ways you are a product of the trauma you suffered when you were a child and a young man. It has never been resolved. It requires intensive support and rehabilitation for it to be resolved.

"In many ways the biggest sadness is that prison really has taken the place of what should have been careful rehabilitative supported care in the community. "

However, Judge Rowe said his hands were tied and that community rehabilitation was not available to Peter in part because of his extensive criminal history.

The notorious Lake Alice. Photo / File

Perhaps pre-empting the inevitable, Peter stood before the sentence was handed down and pleaded with Judge Rowe to give him some kind of access to rehabilitation services so at the very least he'd have something to do in prison.

"I don't even know how to use a cellphone," he said.

Old dogs, new tricks

Peter's experiences with accessing rehabilitation while in prison aren't new. He says older prisoners are finding they're often overlooked in favour of younger inmates who have a greater chance of assimilating back into the community.

"I'm not doing anything in here, I just watch television all day until it's time to go to bed," Peter told Open Justice.

"It's like they think I'm not in here long enough and I'm too old to bother doing anything with me.

"It's not natural to just sit here and do nothing."

Peter said he would do "literally anything" to not sit there all day but said it was a case of the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.

The current prison population by age group. Photo / Corrections

"They don't take much notice of me to be honest. I'm not in a gang, I don't kick the door and I don't abuse the staff. Now I'm starting to wonder if that's the best approach, should I be making more of a fuss?

"They can do all the fancy reports they like but once you come into a place like this, it's not a place where you get help or therapy. It's just a prison."

New Zealand's ageing prison population has skyrocketed in recent years partly because of a national focus on litigating historical sex offenders like those at Dilworth School in Auckland, Lake Alice and the associated Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in state care.

In 2009 the percentage of prisoners aged over 60 was just 1 per cent. By June this year that figure has risen to 7.2 per cent.

It's a number that's forecast to grow.

An Office of the Inspectorate report in 2019 that focused on ageing prisoners' care in the country's prisons found staff would prioritise younger prisoners for rehabilitation as they had a "higher perceived likelihood of successful reintegration".

"Similarly, it is widely accepted in research that older prisoners can be more difficult to resettle into the community compared with younger prisoners," the report says.

"Some prisoners serving lengthy sentences also told us they felt they were considered a lower priority because programme places were limited. Some older prisoners also told us they declined to participate in programmes because they feel 'too old'."

In terms of finding support and accommodation outside prison, the report noted that rest homes may refuse to take former prisoners because of their offences or because they require specialist care to maintain their and others' safety.

"Around half of the prisoners we spoke with told us they did not have accommodation arranged. Many said this was the primary reason they had previously been declined parole."

The report said that most older prisoners said they were placed on voluntary segregation because they felt safer in their units.

"Younger prisoners used to group outside my cell and call me names. When I was in [another unit] prisoners poured urine along the window ledge to intimidate me," a prisoner from Northland Region Corrections Facility said.

The number of prisoners over 60 has surged in the past 10 years to 7.2 per cent. Photo / 123rf

There is also the suggestion that because older prisoners are typically less disruptive than younger prisoners, managers consider them a lower priority and therefore do not give reasonable consideration to their mental health needs.

"It's all getting quite on top of me in here, feelings of depression and anxiety," a prisoner from Whanganui said. "I don't speak to a psychologist at all. They just chuck me in the cell and that's it. We're locked up 20 hours of the day. I have nobody in this unit that I talk to and relate to."

During interviews, some prisoners told inspectors they had feelings of depression but did not want to speak up for fear they would be moved to an Intervention and Support Unit.

Triage

There's a certain logic to the way prison rehabilitation is apportioned but it's still "ageist and wrong," Christine McCarthy from the Howard League for Penal Reform tells Open Justice.

"There's this idea that young people have more of a chance to turn things around.

"They simply don't have the resources to do everybody."

She said that the main killer was boredom for inmates, especially the old, who are passed over for work programmes in preference for younger, fitter and healthier prisoners who will get more out of it.

"If you're just sitting in the same place it has a massive effect on your mental wellbeing, she said.

"I mean people went mad in lockdown and they had way more resources. Imagine being in a small room not getting any social interaction, it's certainly not healthy. "

The types of offences older prisoners have been convicted of. Photo / Corrections

That sentiment was echoed by some of the prisoners in the Inspectorate Report; one from Auckland South Correctional Facility said there was "nothing here for older people".

"We have nothing to do. Some of us can't read because of eyesight and don't have glasses. Older guys can only play cards but that's it."

For others it was a simple matter of health, and dignity, that kept them from participating in activities with the rest of the inmates.

"I stay in my cell every day. The unit has no toilet in the yard," an older prisoner from Northland Region Corrections Facility said.

However, McCarthy says the problem starts well before we even send the elderly to prison.

"If we gave Peter the support services to address the addiction rather than spending 50 years worth of taxpayer money to say we've punished him… well wouldn't that be something?"

She says the inquiry into the abuse in state care highlighted a key issue; how do you compensate people like Peter? Not by throwing them in prison, she says.

"Basically society made a massive mistake and harmed all these people, and now they're getting punished.

"These older people in our prisons they've had a really crap childhood but there's been no compassion, just a want to get them out of society."

There is the option of compassionate release for sick, dying and extremely old prisoners.

New Zealand has seen a surge of older prisoners in its cells over the last decade. Photo / Corrections

From 2015 to 2019 there were 32 applications for compassionate release to the parole board with two-thirds of those granted, three of which were from prisoners over 65.

"In some ways, Corrections is hamstrung by the law," McCarthy says.

"They don't choose who gets let out on compassionate release.

"As much as I don't think Corrections are angels, they can control the environment but not the reasons prisoners are sent there.

"It becomes very easy to blame prisons, but we as a society decided who goes there in the first place."

Life in prison

While life imprisonment for crimes other than murder in New Zealand is relatively rare, many older inmates are resigned to dying behind bars.

One of those is Jim Booth, now in his 70s, a former teacher at a school in Palmerston North who was sentenced to seven years in prison earlier this month.

Booth groomed one of his students for years and molested him weekly at a camp where he would take the boy under the pretence of teaching him to hunt and fish.

He also molested three other boys at the camp during another trip and earlier this year pleaded guilty to eight counts of indecency with a boy between 12 and 16; and nine charges of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection.

"I hope he dies a miserable death in prison," a father of one of his victims tells Open Justice.

Former Palmerston North school teacher Jim Booth outside the Levin District Court in July. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson

It's something Booth's lawyer, Peter Foster, acknowledged when he entered pleas in July this year and was granted bail until his sentencing.

"He's likely to die in prison, he wants time to put his affairs in order."

Booth hobbled into the Palmerston North District Court earlier this month using a walking frame, and was allowed to leave out the front entrance after being sentenced so he could make use of the court's elevators.

Judge Rowe noted that Booth had a range of age-related issues including arthritis and was on a plethora of medication.

"There is no doubt that your health concerns make serving a sentence more difficult than someone in good health," he said.

Between 2015 and 2019, 30 older prisoners died because of assumed natural causes, 15 of those were at Rimutaka Prison.

Corrections is in the final stages of drafting an Ageing Well Action Plan in response to some of the recommendations made in the Prison Inspectorate report.

The report makes one overarching recommendation: that Corrections should develop, appropriately resource, and implement a comprehensive older prisoners' wellbeing strategy to respond to the age-related needs of older prisoners and better manage the increasing numbers of older people in Corrections' care.

Further, it was urged to ensure that older prisoners were placed in an environment appropriate to their needs, restraints are only used if absolutely necessary, rehabilitation and reintegration support can be more easily accessed, and health oversight is increased.

Corrections' chief nurse Debbie Hogan says the report has provided valuable feedback for how the country's prisons cared for older inmates.

Some of the facilities available for older prisoners. Photo / Prison Inspectorate

"The Ageing Well Action Plan will focus on the seven areas of recommendation in the report: environment, safe and humane treatment, health and wellbeing, purposeful activity, rehabilitation and reintegration, post-release support and staff training."

As well as primary care that's provided in prisons, there is a 30-bed High Dependency Unit in Rimutaka and a 20-bed unit at Waikeria Prison equipped to support older men with age-related issues.

Breaking the cycle

Peter thinks Corrections just see him as a lost cause, an old dog not capable of learning new tricks or rehabilitating himself back into the community.

But he says he wants to work, to do something, anything, with what remains of his life.

And that starts with access to therapy, counselling and support both inside and outside of prison.

One of his parole reports from 2014 notes that Peter has never had counselling despite being incarcerated for nearly 40 years at that point.

"He has done an extensive amount of prison time and does not appear to have had a psychological assessment, or if he did he needs to have an updated one," the report states.

"We would like a psychologist to have a look at his past behavioural matters and see what is the best way forward for him.

"He has been telling us he just sits in his cell every day. He is unable to undertake any programmes because of his risk."

He declined to do a drug and alcohol rehab programme and the board found that he has a problem dealing with a therapeutic environment when it involves disclosure to more than one person.

He tells Open Justice this was because his alcohol abuse stems from personal sexual abuse that he wasn't comfortable sharing in front of other prisoners and said exposing that kind of vulnerability was dangerous for an inmate.

The board recommended that he take one-on-one counselling prior to his release into the community.

Peter says he's twice been released back into the community when his sentence was up with no accommodation, money or plan.

He'd spend weeks sleeping at the racecourse in Whanganui or under a bridge.

When he gets out in 2024 - provided he's not granted parole which he's not optimistic about - Peter says he has simple goals.

He wants a house to himself and a dog.

Simple goals, but not such simple answers.

A man who's prone to lighting fires when he's drunk isn't exactly a landlord's first choice of tenant.

"Any fire is serious… I've been so lucky that I've never ever hurt anybody. I live every day worrying that it will happen."

He doesn't want to be a in boarding house where everyone is drunk or stoned and it's impossible to get a rental property because of his extensive criminal record - even though he secures a pension to pay for one.

"They just close the door when you outline your history and say you've been in prison for 40 years… they just close the door."