'Undue risk': Kino Matete denied parole again, continues threats and abuse in prison

Kino Hoki Matete remains at the Auckland Regional Women's Correctional Facility. Photo / NZME

A woman who once threw a bucket of boiling water over a fellow inmate and broke a prison officer's arm is continuing to threaten and abuse other people in jail.

Kino Hoki Matete, 42, was the first woman sentenced to the open-ended jail term of preventive detention, 16 years ago, and has five pages of convictions, including substantial violence and drink-driving.

She has again been denied release after appearing before the Parole Board in July.

Parole Board chairman Sir Ron Young said Matete had been charged with misconduct in prison eight times in the 15 months since her previous Parole Board appearance, in April 2021.

Those misconducts included "threats and abuse", he said, although many did not proceed to a hearing.

Matete received her preventive detention sentence with a nine-year non-parole period after pleading guilty to charges including wounding, injuring and causing grievous bodily harm to others in 2006.

She was on parole in September 2004 when, with a pocket knife, she attacked a woman she believed had burgled her house, causing a cut in her arm which required four stitches.

While on remand in June 2005 for that attack, she threw a bucket of boiling water over a woman who had ripped off her "jail mum". The woman was hospitalised with severe burns.

The next month Matete broke a prison officer's arm after becoming enraged by the way the woman asked her to return a pen.

"There have been a number of concerns about her conduct," Young said in the latest Parole Board decision.

"At times she gets frustrated and when things do not go her way, or she feels disrespected, she can be abusive and talk aggressively to staff.

"She does tend to blame staff for her behaviour and identified to us on the board today that there are a small number of staff that she feels do not act in a respectful way toward her."

However, the report said that Matete had completed the Kimihia violence prevention programme, and the board said that the way forward for her was to complete all her rehabilitation programmes including one-on-one counselling.

It would review her case again by June 2023.

"In the meantime, she remains an undue risk."

Matete remains at the Auckland Regional Women's Correctional Facility.