Prison corruption: Convict's partner avoids jail for part in bribing guard

The partner of a serving prisoner at Spring Hill Prison, Waikato (pictured) avoided jail for her part in bribing an officer to take drugs and tobacco into the prison. Photo / Michael Craig

The partner of a prisoner who arranged to have drugs and tobacco brought into prison has avoided a jail sentence for role in the incident.

Judge Stephen Clark accepted Ngāruawāhia's Sharon West was going through a tough time when she agreed to buy the drugs and tobacco for her former partner, Luke Faasee, who was a prisoner in Spring Hill Prison on June 3, 2019.

Faasee was a prisoner in Spring Hill between March 21 and June 17, 2019.

Faasee called West on June 1 and asked her to buy some drugs and tobacco.

On June 3 he texted West and she met with a Spring Hill prison guard at a petrol station near the prison and handed him the contraband, along with $300 cash.

The prison guard, who worked as a corrections officer between January 23, 2018 and April 22, 2020, later got in touch with her and said that he had been shortchanged and in fact had wanted $500.

West was the last of the trio to be sentenced after accepting sentence indications from December last year.

Faasee was handed a 20-month jail term, while the guard was sentenced to nine months' home detention.

West's counsel Jared Bell told Judge Clark to adopt a pre-sentence report recommendation of community detention and intensive supervision.

He said she was a single mum with a 4-month-old baby and avoiding a harsher sentence of home detention would give her more flexibility in terms of getting necessities.

It was also her first time before the court and she had been assessed as being at a low risk of reoffending.

Judge Clark said the quantity of the drug smuggled into the prison was unknown but he suspected it wasn't a large amount.

"I didn't know the amount of drugs involved and draw the conclusion that it couldn't have been particularly much and the type of drug was not particularly serious otherwise I would have known about it."

Had the drug involved "been more serious" she would have been facing a jail term, he said, as corrupting a prison struck at the heart of the penal and justice systems.

He took a starting point of 18 months' prison before giving her discounts for her guilty plea and mental health situation, and agreed not to impose home detention.

"I do get the distinct impression that you were involved in a relationship with Mr Faasee, you went on to help him, and got involved in the offending in that way."

Given the severity of the charge, he sentenced West to the maximum community detention length of six months along with 12 months' intensive supervision.

She was also now subject to judicial monitoring, so the judge would receive reports of her progress every three months.