COMMENT
When five inmates of Paremoremo prison were awarded $130,000 of public money for being kept too long in solitary confinement and subjected to a few other hardships, this newspaper agreed with those who conceded that the High Court award, while it grated, was probably justified.
In the fortnight since, a bandwagon has begun to roll. We report today that 18 similar claims for compensation are now before the courts and the lawyer who won the original case, Tony Ellis, believes the 18 could collect a total of $500,000 on the basis of the High Court's decision.
Even that may not be the end of it. Mr Ellis, we report, is considering taking a class action on behalf of an estimated 200 inmates who endured solitary confinement under a "behaviour management regime" operated by the Department of Corrections for four years.
That action, if it eventuates and succeeds, could see the taxpayer handing out $4.5 million to some of the country's most hardened criminals. This is stretching public forbearance to breaking point.
It is plainly unsatisfactory that monetary compensation is the only punishment available when the courts decide prisoners' rights have been breached. These people are paying a debt to society for acts of violence, even murder in some cases, beside which the prison's mistreatment of them pales to insignificance.
The prisoners who received sums totalling $130,000 were placed in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, denied changes of bedding and regular medical checks, had to wash their cells and toilets with a bucket of water and an already used rag.
Their hardships add insult to the injury suffered by the victims of their own crimes, which prompted Justice Minister Phil Goff to take steps to ensure that the first call on any future compensation payouts will be recipients' victims or victims' families. But, except in cases where victims' compensation was already owed, that is not a satisfactory outcome either. If a degree of wrong has been done to a prisoner, it is the prisoner who ought to be compensated but preferably in some form other than a monetary handout.
In theory at least, prisons are supposed to encourage personal rehabilitation. If the discontinued behaviour management regime at Paremoremo did the inmates more harm than good, in theory at least, then the department could be directed to offer them extra rehabilitative efforts. The cost of additional programmes might not be much less than the sums the department has been ordered to put in the claimants' hands, but rehabilitative programmes would be a good deal more palatable to the public, and promising for the prisoner, in theory at least.
We are entitled to act on theory in response to a court ruling based on theory, or principle. Justice Ronald Young said his ruling was not "simply hollow words ... It informs Corrections and ensures that errors made will not be repeated ... It reminds us that those members of society who are in prison are entitled to minimum standards of treatment".
By the same principle society is entitled to expect that those who are in prison are genuinely open to rehabilitative efforts. So compensate them with extra opportunities. In the circumstances they might even respond.
<i>Editorial:</i> Public won't wear compo for prisoners
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