Jailers shrug off blog from behind bars

Tim Selwyn

The Corrections Department is powerless to stop a prisoner's internet blog about life behind bars, and doesn't see anything wrong with it anyway.

Tim Selwyn has used a web log to criticise the judge who sentenced him and to write details of the jailyard assault of a prisoner.

The site says Selwyn, jailed this month after a rare sedition - inciting rebellion against the state - conviction as well as on fraud charges, will write regular instalments about life behind bars during his 17-month sentence.

National MP Simon Power has called on Corrections to stop Selwyn's "travelogue", but the department's chief executive, Barry Matthews, yesterday said that he had no intention of doing that.

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Mr Matthews said it appeared that Selwyn was not putting the data on the blog, but was writing letters to somebody who was putting them on to the web page for him.

"He's entitled to do that. He can write letters," Mr Matthews said.

"We vet those letters unless they're sent to a legal adviser, an ombudsman or an MP.

"Unless we've got a legal basis to stop information being sent out, we wouldn't stop it."

It was "inevitable" that information sent legitimately from prison in letters would occasionally end up on a website, he said.

Prime Minster Helen Clark said today the case highlighted a number of issues.

"It used to be that when you were put away, you were put away from society," she told NewstalkZB.

"With the internet, you send your letters off electronically and then someone else can very easily put them on a blog. It raises a whole new set of issues."

Selwyn's musings began shortly after his sentencing, and made weekend headlines because of their graphic account of an assault on a prisoner.

Selwyn claims to have seen an attack which included a man's head being hit against a concrete wall.

Mr Matthews said his department was looking into a "similar incident" which occurred about the time Selwyn wrote his letter.

But he disputed a report which yesterday suggested that the subject of the attack was Roger Tira Kahui, saying, "we don't think it's Kahui".

Kahui was named on Friday as the man charged with the sexual violation and kidnapping of a 37-year-old Pukekohe woman on June 13.

Mr Matthews wasn't concerned that Selwyn had written about a prisoner assault.

"He's related an incident that's occurred," he said. "So what? Anyone else who saw it could do that when they get out."

Selwyn was convicted of sending a seditious document and conspiring to commit wilful damage when he slammed an axe into the window of Prime Minister Helen Clark's electorate office in November, 2004.

He was sentenced to two months' jail for these offences.

He got another 15 months for fraud charges, which included obtaining a passport, a birth certificate, benefits and four Inland Revenue Department numbers under the names of dead people.

Prisoner blogs aren't new internationally - several pop up in response to a simple internet search.

Mr Matthews said Selwyn's efforts were little different to Lesley Martin's book about her experiences in prison after being convicted of attempting to murder her terminally ill mother.

But Mr Power said the internet posed "immediacy" problems that books did not.

"In exactly the same way that the internet causes problems with suppression orders, it could easily cause security problems for prisons," he said.

"I think Corrections needs to address the immediacy and the public nature of the way in which the correspondence or blogging is published."

He plans to take up the matter up with Corrections Minister Damien O'Connor this week.

Mr O'Connor's office yesterday referred questions to Corrections.

- additional reporting NZPA