Prison boss on final warning

The boss of one of New Zealand’s largest prisons has received a final warning after an inmate selfharmed while left on his own without food in an exercise yard for nine hours.

The incident at Christchurch Men’s Prison in June last year took nine days to be flagged at a national level after local staff failed to correctly report it.

The Department of Corrections launched an investigation but only after it received a letter from a whistleblower.

The inquiry identified a series of failings and recommended changes to the way prisoners are checked and managed.

Several prison staff were punished, including long-standing director John Roper, who received a final warning, and unit manager Doug Smith, who received a warning.

A new deputy prison director position has recently been created to bolster the under-fire management team.

Fairfax Media was alerted to the incident last year by a source, who was concerned prison staff had ‘‘tried to sweep it under the carpet’’.

Last week, a summary of the investigation’s findings was released under the Official Information Act after a delay, which resulted in a complaint to the Ombudsman and an apology from Corrections to Fairfax Media. .

Corrections southern regional commissioner Ben Clark said he did not believe there had been a ‘‘cover-up’’ but acknowledged the handling of the incident was ‘‘simply not good enough’’.

The document obtained by Fairfax Media outlines errors by Corrections staff that meant an inmate waiting to be inducted into the prison’s Matai Unit was left in a secure exercise yard without food from 9.45am to 7pm on June 21. The errors included: A random muster was held at 2pm, but guards did not clear the yard where the inmate was being held. His absence went unnoticed and the muster sheet was not signed correctly.

The yard was not cleared when all inmates were locked in their cells and given their dinner about 4.15pm. A ‘‘face-to-name’’ check was carried out, but a senior guard expected only one prisoner to be in the cell where the inmate in question was assigned and his absence again went unnoticed.

Corrections staff and a nurse discovered the inmate in the yard when he called out to them as they were moving between units about 7pm.

He had an unauthorised disposable razor and superficial wounds on his ankle and knee as a result of self-harm. He was taken to the health unit for treatment, but no assessment of his risk of further self-harm was made.

The incident was reported quickly to the unit manager, who carried out an investigation the next day.

However, none of the staff involved in the prisoner’s discovery wrote reports about what had happened, and it was nine days before the incident was flagged nationally.

Clark said prison management should have alerted him to the incident earlier.