It looks as though New Zealand will soon be instituting a mandatory registration system for child sex offenders. There is perhaps a no more heinous crime than child sex offending and paedophilia, so the suggestion of keeping tabs on convicted child sex offenders upon their release from prison can seem like something to celebrate.  However, before the government gets their cheque book out and throws down the cash to get the register running, let’s look at the facts.

 The purpose of the child sex offender registry is to identify, monitor and manage the risk posed by convicted child sex offenders who have come to the end of their sentence.  The goal is to be able to stop the sex offenders in their tracks if they act suspiciously or as a threat to public safety.  The offenders will be monitored for periods of time ranging from 8 years to a lifetime, dependent on the scale of their offending.
 
It seems like a suitable political response to quell public fears of sex offenders running rampant on the streets.  Not a hard idea for politicians to sell to the public.  What comes with this is a greater perceived sense of security.  People can sleep easy knowing that child sex offenders are accounted for.  But does it work?

Reports on the effectiveness of similar oversees models hardly act as compelling reading in favour of the register.  Studies from the United States have indicated that sex offender registers have little to no impact on reoffending rates. A recent Australian study has found that on balance, the evidence available does not support the idea that sex offender registries are an effective means of reducing recidivism.  Bang for the taxpayer’s buck? Apparently not.

We cannot ignore the fact that 65% of perpetrators committing a sexual act against children in New Zealand have a family relationship with the child victim.  What is the value of accounting for child sex offenders for up to a lifetime when we already know where a large proportion of them are? They are in our homes. 

A 2011 Department of Corrections study has shown that 30% of child sex offenders were convicted of a new offence within 5 years of being released from prison.  This is well below the 52% average re-imprisonment rate for all released prisoners within 5 years.  This is even lower than that of the reconviction rate of sexual offences against adults which sits at 35%. So we do have to ask, why is the registry initiative only extending to sexual offences against children?

So why sex offenders?  We would all agree that child sex offending is the worst of the worst, but if we are looking to increase public safety, why not have a register for recidivist armed burglars? Or a register for convicted murders? Where do we draw the line?  Should we have all convicted criminals on a register?

Alternatively, we have options such as redirecting funding to programs that actually reduce reoffending. One such programme with known benefits is the Kia Marama treatment programme for child sex offenders.  An evaluation has found an 8% recidivism rate for child sex offenders who successfully completed the programme. That’s an incredible result for any rehabilitation programme. In-prison programmes like this have yielded very real, meaningful results and are less invasive than a child sex offender registry. In this case we may be better served investing in services that have proven track records of success. 

This project will carry a price in the millions of dollars, but there is no international evidence that it will reduce offending at all. Instead simply plays upon hysteria without creating any less victims. The implementation of a registry may be an easy sell with politicians and the general public, but not so much with the evidence. 

The Howard League is calling for an independently run investigation into the Mt Eden ‘fight club’ videos and the Department of Corrections’ relationship with Serco.

No doubt you’ve all read about the videos that have surfaced online, showing remanded prisoners in Auckland’s Mt Eden prison engaged in organised fistfights in front of groups of onlookers.

Rather than being run by the Department of Corrections, Mt Eden is run by Serco, a British company with an enormous portfolio of government work, including prisons around the world. Serco’s new prison in South Auckland, which opened only recently, has a further 966 beds, doubling the number of prisoners under Serco’s watch. The prison has a focus on education and rehabilitation, and has made the unusual step of providing prisoners enrolled in Polytech courses with their own computers and tablets. Although they have been accused and convicted of a range of concerning and dishonest practices overseas, Serco’s record here remained relatively blemish-free until recently, when a range of complaints have begun to emerge.

While the fights in these videos are not especially bloody or violent (although some of them are clearly one-sided, and it has been alleged that the participants are not always willing) they are the tip of a much deeper and more concerning iceberg.

These fight clubs should have been impossible to miss. Guards should have been nearby and others should have been watching through CCTV cameras. Any such events should have been caught on camera. This means that either staff have been letting this happen (which also seems unlikely, although it does happen) or were somehow too busy or spread too thin to notice (which seems possible). 

Unfortunately it turns out that Corrections has been aware of these issues for some time: the Corrections Association has said that they raised issues regarding fight clubs more than a year ago in a detailed report that was read by the chief executive, the national commissioner and the northern regional commissioner. Despite the seriousness of this report no action was taken, and the Minister for Corrections claims not to have been told.

Labour MP Kelvin Davis has raised further significant concerns by alleging that injured prisoners have been transferred out of Mt Eden to other prisons in order to keep Serco’s injury numbers down. One of these prisoners, whose name we know only as Prisoner Evans, is alleged to have died from his injuries. Despite having a ruptured lung he was sent to hospital only after first being transferred to Ngawha prison in Northland, which is over 240 kilometres away.

Davis alleges that this prisoner was killed by “a practice in Mt Eden Correctional Facility that is called 'dropping' - where prisoners, new prisoners usually who walk into Mt Eden, are sized up by gangs, they're bashed up and they're dropped off the balconies on to the concrete below for good measure." He claims that his also left another man with two broken legs.

If true, this represents an incredibly serious failure on Serco’s account. Much like the fights seen in the videos, an incident of ‘dropping’ isn’t something that would be easy to hide. It’s also indicative of very serious concerns within the Department of Corrections and the government. Why would staff at Ngawha take delivery of a mortally wounded prisoner without raising any alarm, and who would authorise that transfer for Serco’s benefit?

These incidents have come out just as we have entered renegotiation period for their government contract. Although the contract itself is for ten years in total, the terms and pricing of the contract can be renegotiated at this half-way point, or the contract can be abandoned altogether. If no ongoing agreement is made, the contract will end in 2016. This means we are at a critical juncture, and it’s essential that we have the right information before any decisions are made.

The Corrections Minister has promised an investigation into the videos and these allegations, but it will be conducted internally by Corrections and Serco. Given that senior Corrections staff have been aware of the issues in Serco’s prison for over a year and have done nothing, this isn’t sufficiently trustworthy. The investigation will be overseen by the Ombudsman, but it’s not clear how extensively.

The inquiry must be carried out entirely by an independent body. If it isn’t, we can’t be sure what might be swept under the rug. 

The Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman recently escaped from a prison shower using an impressive underground tunnel with electric lights and its own railway powered by half of a motorcycle. Guzman’s escape is notable for its sheer comic-book absurdity, but also because it’s not the first time he’s done it: he first escaped by bribing guards and hiding in a laundry hamper in 2001, and he stayed on the run all the way through until his recapture in 2014.

Watching all of this unfold we asked ourselves: could this happen in New Zealand?

Unlikely.

But there are a lot of other, less Shawshank Redemption ways of escaping prison, and we’ve seen a lot of them over the years.

Like Philip smith, who made a short-lived escape to Brazil last year, most of prison escapes come in the form of “walk outs”, where prisoners on work outside of the facilities or on short-term releases simply fail to report back.

Despite being relatively easy to do, this isn’t especially common – prisoners who are allowed out for work or short-term release are already nearing their actual release, something that they don’t want to jeopardise. That’s especially true in New Zealand, where the odds of successfully evading capture for any meaningful period of time without leaving the country are essentially nil. Most escapees are caught relatively quickly, and obviously an escape attempt is unlikely to be looked upon kindly when considering parole or assigning any other privileges like work programmes or temporary release.

Given that poor impulse control is something that’s led a lot of people into prison however, it does happen, and there are ways to escape the country – Brandon Victor Pillay (also known as Ricardo Pisano) walked away from a work detail half way through his 15 month sentence for extortion, and was not seen for ten years until he appeared facing a murder charge in the UK in 2013. How exactly he managed to leave New Zealand is not clear.

For his ten-year escape, Pillay has been dubbed “New Zealand’s greatest prison escaper”. But for a walk-out that title hardly seems deserving: our previous longest escaper, and once New Zealand’s most wanted man, was Brian Curtis, who escaped only two years into an 18 year sentence for attempting to import 1.5 million dollars’ worth of LSD. He and a friend escaped from Paremoremo maximum security prison in 1990 by cutting through prison bars and climbing over a wall using a ladder made from shelving held together with tape. Curtis also made it out of the country - it wasn’t until eight years later that his poor-impulse control got the better of him and he was caught trying to cash a forged cheque in the Philippines.

Despite the drama of his escape, Curtis only broke free once. Others have made a career of it: Aaron Steven Forden, who has earned the nickname “Houdini”, has escaped custody on multiple occasions, the most famous when he scaled Mt Eden’s walls with a rope made out of sheets in 2008, and the most recent in 2011 when he and an accomplice broke into a service way and fled in the early hours of the morning. His time on the run has included sprees of burglary, car theft, high speed police chases and even ramming police cars. He also has a history of destroying his prison cells as a form of protest against his prison conditions, which included 23-hour lockdown and no access to rehabilitation services.

Perhaps our most significant career escapist comes from as far back as the 1960s. George Wilder not only escaped from prison three times and lived on the run for over 237 days in total (without leaving the country), but also won the hearts of everyday New Zealanders as he went. Despite committing a string of burglaries and thefts during a run that covered over 2600 kilometres, he left apology notes and cleaned up any property that he entered. He often came within a hair’s breadth of being caught, but escaped repeatedly by swimming across rivers, driving through police barricades and running through the bush.  At one point he evaded capture by joining in a shoulder-to-shoulder search party that was attempting to track him. As the public watched his daring escapes with increasing interest, he became something of a folk hero. A popular song was even written about him. 

It’s unlikely that we’ll ever see another George Wilder – as we saw from Philip Smith’s escape, pictures and information about fugitives are spread much further and faster than they were in the 60s, making it much harder to stay out for long. William Stewart followed a similar playbook for his 100-day escape in 2009, but his habit of carving the thankyou notes into tables rang a little less sincere. 

As a partnership between the Howard League and Community Law Canterbury, the Prison Information Service (PIS) runs once a month in three Canterbury Prisons.  Under the current guidance of Katie Keenan, the Service offers welfare and legal advice and attempts to solve prisoners’ problems largely via a large group of volunteers from the University of Canterbury.

The rationale behind the service is that when prisoners have issues hanging over their heads it makes them feel anxious, frustrated and therefore difficult to control.  Also, undealt with issues on the outside often snowball and so on release that start behind the eight ball. All of this is highly counterproductive to efforts made by the Department of Corrections.  By meeting with the volunteers, prisoners are able to discuss any issues, clear the air and move forward with their rehabilitation.

The strength of the service is the reputation of the Howard League and Community Law.  Often prisoners are not inclined to listen to Corrections staff and prefer to obtain advice from an outside party.  The volunteers are seen as trustworthy and impartial, allowing for the prisoners to freely discuss any issues.  The prisoners are also aware that the volunteers are unpaid and therefore acting out of a sense of doing the right thing.  

While the prisoners clearly benefit, the volunteers also gain a great deal.  Going into the prisons and speaking with prisoners allows volunteers to open their eyes to elements of society they may otherwise not have seen.  The life skills gained from interacting with prisoners creates well rounded graduates.

The PIS has recently been reviewed for the second time and once again the results are positive. These results of the survey are testament to the quality of volunteers and the strength of the service model.  It is great to be able to quantify the value of the work done by a team of hard working volunteers.  It is encouraging to see the volume of prisoners recommending the service to others and it is hoped that the service only continues to grown in strength and value.

Read the full 2015 evaluation here.

We were very pleased to see the launch of the New Zealand Public Interest Project (NZPIP) a few weeks ago. NZPIP is a volunteer-based non-government organisation that will investigate and pursue miscarriages of justice and civil issues within New Zealand.

In the UK they have the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates potential miscarriages of justice. The CCRC was created by an Act of Parliament, and is funded by the government, although it operates independently, much like the Ombudsman here in New Zealand. The CCRC represents a step in the justice process that we’re missing here. There are options available within the system for those who have been wrongly convicted, such as the Court of Appeal, but they’re often expensive and hard to access. Because of this, it has been estimated that as many as 20 wrongfully convicted individuals are imprisoned in New Zealand at any given time.

Unfortunately, the government has been very clear that it feels that the current system is adequate, and that we do not need a review commission. However many prominent New Zealanders, such as Sir Thomas Thorp and Dr Don Brash, both of whom spoke at the launch, have been vocal over the years in stating that we do.

NZPIP was created as a way of bringing a CCRC-style process to the New Zealand system, outside of official channels. Instead of being funded by the government, NZPIP is staffed by volunteers and funded through donations. This team includes prominent academics, private investigators, forensic scientists and lawyers. It also includes the Howard League’s own Nigel Hampton QC and Dr Jarrod Gilbert, as well as Tim McKinnel, who spoke at our recent AGM. Members of this team have been involved in potential miscarriage of justice cases before, including those of Teina Pora and Mark Lundy.

This model, which includes using University of Canterbury students, also means that NZPIP can pursue other cases outside of miscarriages of justice. They plan to undertake civil cases as well, focusing on areas that serve the broader public interest or concern the rights of many citizens.

NZPIP is now considering its first set of applications. If you have or know about a case that might be a miscarriage of justice, or might be valid civil case, you can download the form from their website or request a form in the mail.  

John Howard saw both sides of a prison wall and presumably couldn’t decide which was worse – the depths of a French dungeon in the 18th century, or a system that allowed jailers to keep prisoners incarcerated until they could pay their way out. A few cents short of a dollar meant a few years short of freedom.

It wasn’t the money that was the issue for Howard, the son of a wealthy upholsterer, it was the principle.  In what 21st century contemporaries would term ‘corruption’, Howard existed in a time where prisoners paid the jailers directly for food, a bed and use of facilities.  Having been imprisoned himself following the capture of his ship by the French, Howard was privy to the realities of an overcrowded and disease-ridden prison system.  Eventually traded for a French prisoner in a British jail, he was released.  Albeit not without sentiments of anger and disgust.

He was appointed High Sheriff of Bedfordshire, a role that included supervision of the county jail. Howard grew to be outraged and shocked at both the conditions and the management of the prison system.  With a deep social conscience, Howard sought change at the highest levels.

Taking his concerns to the House of Commons, Howard advocated for the abolishment of jailer’s fees and improvements to conditions for prisoners.  Said to have been thanked by lawmakers for his ‘humanity and zeal’, Howards efforts were instrumental in the passing of the 1774 Gaol Act.   This Act was a visionary piece of legislation that put prisoner’s rights and wellbeing into focus.

Howard did not stop there, rather he is said to have travelled some 80,000km in his lifetime to visit prisons and continue to advocate for prison reform. 80,000km undoubtedly provided ample material for his seminal work ‘The State of the Prisons in England and Wales’ (1777).

Continuing his efforts of social reform up until his death of typhus in 1790, John Howard established a legacy of social conscience, compassion and resolve. From prisoner to prisoner rights advocate, Howard left his mark on the most vulnerable of people.  The Howard Association was established some 76 years after his, undoubtedly testament to the strength of his legacy and the value of his determination.  The Howard League was later opened in New Zealand in 1924.

Today the Howard League for Penal Reform in New Zealand advocates for prison reform and criminal justice.  Two and a quarter centuries on from his death, John Howard is still inspiring change and advocating for humanity.

Peter Williams has died.

A giant within New Zealand's legal fraternity, Peter constantly battled for the underdog. He was a man of great intellect and humanity

For many years he was a stalwart of the Howard League in Auckland. He will be sorely missed by the League branches in Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

Rest in Peace, our dear friend.

The Howard League in Canterbury is hosting a guest lecture by Tim McKinnel titled “the case of the innocent prisoner”. Tim will talk about his work on the case of Teina Pora, whose wrongful conviction for rape and murder saw him imprisoned for more than 21 years.

Tim is a former police detective from South Auckland. In 2005 he left the police as he completed his master’s degree in criminology. 

In mid-2009, shortly after establishing a north island office of Zavést, a private investigation firm, he visited Teina Pora in Springhill Prison. Tim had for some time been interested in examining Pora’s case - on the face of it the case appeared to have been an obvious miscarriage of justice.

He spoke with Teina about his case and with Teina's agreement immediately began a review of his convictions. 

At the end of 2009 Tim asked Jonathan Krebs to be Pora’s new lawyer. They spent the following four years collating police, defence, Crown and court files, as well as collecting fresh evidence on Teina's behalf. Some of this worked involved issuing proceedings against police for the refusal to release evidence that was required to assist with Teina's appeal. Dr Anna Sandiford oversaw review of the scientific evidence.

Pora’s appeal was changed from an application for the Prerogative of Mercy to a Privy Council case in June 2013. The Prerogative of Mercy would have provided Pora a full pardon by the Governor General, but would have been a rare admission of failure on behalf of the legal system. Instead the Privy Council was chosen as a more likely alternative.

In early 2014, Pora was granted parole after more than 21 years in prison, and in November the case went to the Privy Council in London.

In March of this year Pora’s convictions were quashed, and a month later no re-trial was ordered.

Teina Pora is now a free, innocent man.

Pora’s legal team also included Ingrid Squire, Dr Malcolm Birdling and Kim McCoy, all of whom undertook several thousand hours of work, mostly unpaid, to set this case right.

The lecture will be held at 7:00pm on Monday the 18th of May, in room 108 of the Law Building at the University of Canterbury. All who are interested are welcome, and there is no charge. The AGM will follow afterwards.

A new private prison is due to the opened in Wiri, South Auckland, next month.

The management contract for this prison has been awarded to an international consortium named Securefuture. Within this group, the prison is to be primarily run by Serco, a British outsourcing company with contracts for state services including schools, public transport, nuclear weapons and others in various countries. This international portfolio of contracts runs in the billions of dollars. This is to be the second privately run prison in New Zealand, after Mt Eden, which has been run by Serco since 2010. Under this arrangement, Serco provides their own staff and management, but is ultimately answerable to the Department of Corrections, and does not own the prison complex.

The new prison at Wiri will have beds for 966 male inmates, and is intended to replace units within the Waikeria, Rangipo and Rimutaka prisons, which are among New Zealand’s oldest facilities. This means relocating or terminating as many as 260 Department of Corrections employees in those prisons. They will not be able to move to the Wiri prison, however, because the facility has already been fully staffed by Serco.

As the country focuses on the Northland by-election, a lot has been said about the “prominent New Zealander” who has been recently charged with indecent assault, and whose name has been suppressed by the courts. While isn’t hard to find out who the accused is, but the order goes a long way toward keeping the person themselves out of public discussion.

Name suppression comes in two flavours: temporary and permanent. Temporary name suppression can last for as little as 48 hours, or for the length of a trial. Permanent name suppression is much harder to get, and is generally only given in cases where revealing the accused’s name might also identify the victim.

Name suppression keeps the media from publishing details about those involved, breaches of which are punishable by a fine of up to $100,000.

The media tend to give an implicit sense that this kind of name suppression is given out too freely, but in fact the number of suppression orders given in New Zealand has been steadily declining in recent years.

Public figures (and their family members) are sometimes given name suppression in cases where the public’s reaction might have a disproportionate effect on their career, over and above the intention of the punishment handed down by the court. This is a valid concern, but also raises issues of public interest, especially in cases where the accused is in a position of power.

One of the assumptions that we make in the justice system is that an open court is better than a closed one: justice shouldn't be something that takes place away from the public gaze. This keeps justice fair by holding the courts accountable to the public for their decisions, and helps to keep the public safe by letting them know who among them has committed crimes. It’s also part of the penalty: the shame of being convicted and punished is a lot less meaningful, we assume, if it’s kept a secret.

Name suppression turns that assumption on its head: although we are still allowed to publish details of the court case, the key details of who is involved are obscured, either temporarily or permanently.

This has some advantages over more normal operation: if the ‘naming and shaming’ of offenders is to be a part of the punishment, it shouldn't begin before conviction, when the accused remains innocent until proven otherwise. The number of people potentially wrongfully affected by this punishment is not small: of all of the cases made in court in 2013, for example, just over a quarter (that’s 62,495 cases) did not result in a conviction.

This has significant ramifications. Many people will remember charges but not the outcome.

So in either protecting victims of crime, or attempting to stop injustice, protection orders do have an important role. There remains a lingering concern, though, that those of privilege gain greater advantage than those who aren't. But that’s hardly a unique concern within the criminal justice system.