Safety trumps jail letter rights

There’s a revealing figure in a Department of Corrections response to an Official Information Act request sent to a Stuff political reporter last week. It’s 299: the number of letters from New Zealand prison inmates withheld in the previous 12 months. In the same period, 21 incoming letters were withheld.

There is no detail about the nature of the outgoing letters. But we know they didn’t include an ‘‘incendiary’’ six-page letter from the man accused of carrying out the mosque terror attacks in Christchurch on March 15. It ended up posted on 4chan, an online haunt of white supremacists, in August, drawing praise and solidarity for the accused shooter, and bringing down humiliation on the department and Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis.

Nor did they include two letters reportedly sent to MediaWorks and Television New Zealand by white supremacist Philip Arps, jailed for sharing the shooter’s livestreamed video. Nor a letter from serial stalker Kerryn Mitchell to her victims. Which begs the question: what was in the withheld letters?

It was quickly acknowledged, of course, that the alleged gunman’s letter should never have been allowed through. At the time, Davis said two of the man’s seven letters from the high-security wing at Auckland Prison at Paremoremo had been withheld. His right to send and receive mail was immediately suspended.

So it is gratifying to hear that the Department of Corrections is to get the beefed-up powers it asked for in August to block mail in and out of prisons, especially given a couple of other revealing figures reported by Stuff. Some 15,000 items of mail pass through prisons each week, and Corrections manages ‘‘a significant number of people with views that might be considered ‘extreme’, including around 100 people with white supremacist views’’. In short, monitoring mail is one challenging task among many for prison staff.

Balancing the rights of inmates with those of victims or the general public is naturally challenging too.

Although public sympathy for prisoners is often in short supply, being deprived of liberty does not stop them being human, and there has been recent debate about their right to vote. A report last week on a spying scandal at Christchurch Men’s Prison highlighted how staff must follow protocol when listening in on suspected criminal activity. Those protocols are about prisoners’ rights, important in a civilised society. ‘‘The end justifies the means’’ is not an appropriate approach to law enforcement.

The Corrections Act stipulates ‘‘legislatively required minimum entitlements’’ for every prisoner, including the right to send and receive mail. But when it comes to the distribution of harmful ideologies, the rights of the general public – globally, given the potential reach of such communications – take precedence.

A proposed amendment, which was due to have its third reading last night, adds ‘‘an explicit provision that allows for the withholding of prisoner mail that promotes or encourages hostility towards any group of people’’, and allows mail to be withheld if it threatens or intimidates any person, not just its intended recipient.

Good. This is about public safety. If it leaves some inmates without an outlet beyond the walls for their most depraved thoughts, that’s really the point.

This is about public safety. If it leaves some inmates without an outlet beyond the walls for their most depraved thoughts, that’s really the point.