Prisons: whose responsibility?

By MATTHEW DEARNALEY

Jails, who wants them?

Not liberal-minded Corrections Minister Matt Robson, and certainly not shell-shocked communities where three new prisons are planned - in north Waikato, Manukau City and Northland.

Mr Robson's is a qualified 'no.' The strong advocate of restorative justice and other rehabilitation says he wants to be in the game of closing prisons, not opening them.

But he adds that he has to be realistic about reducing the need for new cells before he can put himself and his department out of the construction business, especially with inmate numbers set to rise 40 per cent by 2010.

And he is courting disbelief among opponents by wondering why communities see new prisons in their backyard in a negative light, saying he would not mind one in his Auckland suburb of Ellerslie.

"I could understand it if prisons were carrying out executions and torturing people and throwing the bodies over the wall," he said at the weekend.

"But it is not Dr [Josef] Mengele's experimental centre," he said, in reference to the notorious Nazi medic who supervised the extermination of Jews and other inmates at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Mr Robson is appealing to middle New Zealand to regard prisons more like hospitals than punitive institutions where society exacts vengeance.

He despairs at hardliners like former Whangarei MP John Banks, who demanded before retiring at the last election that "low lifes" should not be caged near his farming constituents.

But Mr Robson's avowed good intentions do not wash with residents of Te Kauwhata in the north Waikato, already stressed by a David and Goliath battle against plans for the country's biggest landfill to be developed just up the road at Hampton Downs.

They learned before Christmas that two sites, on either side of the landfill, had been been shortlisted for a 683-bed "South Auckland" men's prison

Neither were Manurewa and Papatoetoe folk too happy to find that their qualified acceptance of a new youth justice residential centre had apparently left them as a soft target for a 150 to 200-bed women's prison.

Local feelings are more divided at the Ngawha geothermal resort near Kaikohe in Northland, where the Corrections Department wants to build a 350-bed prison by 2003, after backing away from a scrap with Mr Banks and his Whangarei farmers.

Maori trustees who began negotiating to sell land to the Crown were dumped after the beneficial owners found out, and rival versions of tribal history will be argued at a resource hearing next week to determine whether the site is on tapu land.

Opponents say a prison is no answer to regional development, but supporters argue that regions must share the responsibility of hosting prisons.

New Zealand is said to have one of the highest per capita rates of incarceration in the developed world. How do we compare with others?

This country had 126 prison inmates for every 100,000 people in 1995, compared with 96 in Australia and 99 in England and Wales.

However, we were still markedly more liberal than in the US, where the imprisonment rate was 598.

So how many New Zealanders are behind bars, how full are the prisons, and what are the growth projections?

Numbers fluctuate almost daily, and usually peak in August before the annual pre-Christmas releases, but have risen by about 38 per cent in the past 10 years.

Last week, we had 5836 people under lock and key, with room for up to 6130.

Numbers are expected to grow to an average daily muster of 6922 in 2008 and to 8237 by 2010.

How much is it costing us?

Locking people away in our 18 prisons cost taxpayers $210.4 million last year, out of a total Corrections Department budget of $364 million, although the $144 cost a day for each inmate was considerably less than the $220 spent in England and Wales, and lower than in every Australian State except for Queensland.

However, a Government report obtained by the Herald under the Official Information Act revealed that this country's jails are in a mess, with up to $420 million needed to fix sanitation, security and safety problems.

And the cost of building about 1100 new cells in the next seven years, not counting replacing Mt Eden Prison, is expected to run to $336 million.

Who are we locking up in prison?

Women are still vastly outnumbered by men in the prison population.

However, a growth in violent offences committed by young females helped to push the muster to a record 330 late last year.

This left authorities short of room, forcing them to move women into a 40-bed unit at Mt Eden men's prison.

Last week there were still 291 women behind bars.

Self-described Maori and part-Maori accounted for 49 per cent of male sentenced prisoners in 1997 and for 55 per cent of female non-remand inmates.

Population forecasts indicate that 1847 more Maori and 450 Pacific people will be in prison by 2013.

But numbers of other ethnic groups behind bars are expected to decline.

What are we doing about reducing prison populations, and why are numbers marching up regardless?

With 36 per cent of prisoners finding themselves back behind bars within 12 months of their release, the Government acknowledges a need for more rehabilitation programmes in prison.

A priority is to remove young prisoners from hardened criminals where possible, in seven specialist youth units being built at existing and new prisons.

Maori focus units are also being built at various prisons, using cultural education in a bid to reduce reoffending, and integrated offender management is a new programme for better assessing the risks of releasing hardened criminals on parole.

The Government sees construction of low-rise prisons, far removed from the 19th-century edifice it wants to close at Mt Eden, as a key to reducing tensions in prisons. It also wants to house additional workshops and visiting facilities.

A modest contribution from the introduction of home detention, expected to become available to about 300 paroled inmates, has been built into population forecasts.

But so has an estimate of the impact of home invasion legislation, while tougher sentencing generally in response to violent crime is also pushing up prison populations.

The Government says it is committed to what it calls a regional prisons programme. What is this?

Every region needs one, or so the Government is telling local communities up in arms about having prisons on their doorstep.

According to publicity given out to North Waikato residents, locating offenders as close as possible to their families and whanau is an important part of reducing re-offending, so they do not lose valuable ties.

Te Kauwhata residents are outraged that their district, already lumbered with plans for a huge landfill to take metropolitan Auckland's rubbish, has now been defined as South Auckland for purposes of the regional prisons strategy.

Te Kauwhata's sole-practice GP, Dr Geoff Knight, points out that the catchment for the new prison's inmates is north of Mercer, with offenders in his district still likely to be sent to Waikeria in the Waikato.

The Corrections Department says a need for 90ha to take the $160 million prison meant it was unable to find a site large enough north of the Bombay Hills, even though 11 per cent of the country's prisoners are from South Auckland.

Some of these now have to be sent as far away as Invercargill, and it says it will look at providing transport help for families wanting to visit inmates of the new prison, to be built on one of two shortlisted sites between Meremere and Te Kauwhata. Dr Knight hopes that is not an idle promise, saying families without cars have great trouble visiting inmates closer to Auckland at Paremoremo, and it is not uncommon for prisoners at Waikeria to serve their time without seeing any visitors.

He is also concerned that toxic gases from the nearby landfill could jeopardise the health of prisoners, unable to get out of harm's way, a concern derived from scientific evidence attached to the dump operator's resource consent application.

Isn't this just a classic case of "nimbyism," with a local community suddenly professing concern for prisoners' welfare to disguise the ulterior motive for resistance: Not in My Backyard?

Te Kauwhata's 900 residents include those in a large retirement village, many of whom have signed a petition circulated by one of their number opposing the prison.

Mr Robson says he visited a prison in Victoria where residents of a retirement village, although initially apprehensive, attend barbecues with inmates and joke that they are all prisoners to some degree. He invites a similar approach from Te Kauwhata.

But Dr Knight says the minister is ignoring matters of scale, with such a large prison being built several kilometres away likely to swamp and stretch the largely volunteer support services of such a small village.

He says there is only one mental health nurse for the district, one village policeman, and the volunteer fire brigade is already one of the busiest in the country, attending to large numbers of gruesome vehicle collisions.

Dr Knight says residents, including farmers unable to sell their land, feel a strong sense of unfairness from having to host two undesirable projects serving people from outside the area.

Retirement village resident Alma Hall, aged 79, is appalled a social impact report prepared by the Corrections Department did not even include Te Kauwhata village in its ambit.

"We feel in jeopardy, we are near a railway line and a swamp. Escaped prisoners can hide in the swamp - there's already marijuana there."

What's happening up north at Ngawha, where the Corrections Department already holds a ministerial designation to build a prison?

Appeals to the Environment Court against the prison designation, by a Maori group and resort developers, are on hold until the Northland Regional Council deals with earthworks and stream diversion consent applications.

A hearing is due next week at which the Friends of Ngawha group will argue that the Corrections Department wants to bury unrecovered ancestral bones from an 18th-century battle on the site with huge volumes of earth.

Other Maori deny there was any such battle, but say they have said prayers to lift any tapu in case they are mistaken.

Toi Maihi says the prison plan is an affront both to her ancestors and modern Maori, who deserve more support in developing their region than having their young people incarcerated.

"We use traditional restorative justice. The ones we catch go before the old people and have a chance to restore their mana and the damage done. It is far better than being put in a crappy prison."

But Maori Anglican Bishop Ben Te Haara says the problem of youth offending is one that can't be dealt with by sending miscreants to prisons outside the region.

He says having a prison in their midst will give local people a responsibility they cannot avoid, to assume their share of the problem.