Inmate says he intends to kill
Frank Finch has been in and out of state homes and prisons since his pre-teens. Now his grandfather fears soon-to-bereleased Finch is on the cusp of committing an ‘‘horrendous’’ crime. Senior reporter
Rod Finch loves his grandson, but he is the first to say Frank Finch is a ‘‘loose cannon on P’’. He has an ‘‘animal instinct’’ for survival triggered by a troubled childhood that led to drug addiction, a criminal list ‘‘as long as your arm’’, and neglected mental health issues.
Finch junior first started smoking marijuana at 9 while living in Hokitika. It escalated and by 15 he was smoking P.
‘‘He says to me, ‘Grandad, you should try [P], it makes you feel so good, you can do anything’.’’
But it’s this addiction – along with uncontrolled mental illness – which has Finch senior and a prisoner lobby group worried the 22-year-old will be set free on November 10 with serious consequences.
On October 1 during his sentencing at Christchurch District Court for threatening to kill a family member, Finch exploded into a torrent of abuse at Judge David Saunders that ended in him being dragged from the dock.
The court heard about his ‘‘flippant and immature’’ comment about wanting to be ‘‘New Zealand’s first serial killer’’ – the same day that he made the threat about family – in the days after Christchurch’s terrorist attack.
His grandfather says Finch also wrote to him on March 16, in support of white supremacism and praising the alleged gunman.
But Finch senior says his grandson is not a white supremacist, he was seeking attention and ‘‘winding up’’ the prison guards.
The day he swore at Judge Saunders he was trying to tell him in his own way that his sentence had not been calculated correctly. The anomaly was discovered later, and his sentence was adjusted to see him due for release from prison three months earlier.
His lawyer Allister Davis told
Stuff the judge had been confused about Finch’s release date, due to his previous prison sentence blending into him being on remand for the latest offence. ‘‘Frank was correct, which was why he lost it.’’
Finch senior says Frank was ‘‘very apologetic for his outburst, but that he was trying to get the message across and tell the judge he was wrong’’.
He is a ‘‘smart cookie’’, but often expresses it in the wrong way.
His primary school teachers identified his intelligence early on.
But a diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) at age 10 explained why he acted out against any form of authority.
‘‘He has been expelled from every school he went to, within weeks.’’
It is ‘‘a terrible condition’’, which some children grow out of. Finch has not.
Finch’s parents separated when he was very young and his father gave up his job to care for him. But despite seeking professional help he couldn’t cope with the young boy’s challenging behaviour. By the age of 11 he was ward of the state.
in the decade since, he has been in and out of various youth institutions and prison. Finch senior said his grandson saw being incarcerated as his ‘‘comfort zone’’.
‘‘Prison for Frank is not a consequence, it’s not a punishment.’’’’
There are some who fear his offending will escalate to murder.
RELEASE IN WEEKS
Finch senior worries his grandson is being set up to fail on his release, after months of sitting in prison on remand with no treatment.
‘‘The worry is that under the influence of P, he is capable of committing horrendous crimes.’’
But the Corrections Department told Stuff it is ‘‘absolutely committed to having the strongest possible plan in place to ensure the safety of the community and the rehabilitation of the offender’’.
Finch senior said there had never been structured plans on his releases from prison.
‘‘The system has failed him no end, right from the youth system.
‘‘Whatever they’re doing is not working.’’
He had many assessments over the years, but nothing came of them, Finch senior says.
‘‘There’s nothing forcing him, the law doesn’t force him to do anything.’’
ADDICTION
At his sentencing, Judge Saunders said it was regretful Finch had had a ‘‘troubled youth’’, but he had a clear ambivalence about quitting drugs and was at high risk of reoffending.
Finch spoke up in court to say he had tried drug rehabilitation three times but ‘‘couldn’t do it’’.
‘‘I don’t want to quit drugs. I enjoy doing them. I don’t have the motivation to quit.’’
Parole reports repeatedly declined Finch early release from a three-year imprisonment in 2015 for a raft of burglary, theft, and reckless driving offences. They show a series of failed attempts at drug rehab.
A November 2015 report says he had to leave his first rehab attempt due to ‘‘safety concerns not all of his making’’.
Despite needing treatment ‘‘urgently’’, he was in prison a year simply waitlisted for one-on-one counselling, it says.
In June 2016, a report talks of concern Finch was not ready for drug treatment.
‘‘Frank Finch presents as a young man with problems.
‘‘We see him as an undue risk to the safety of the community.’’
His ‘‘tendencies towards manipulation and lying’’ were raised in an October 2016 report.
He had been referred to another drug treatment programme, ‘‘but withdrew from that after two weeks’’.
In April 2017, the board needed to see him ‘‘demonstrate a capacity to begin something and to see it through’’.
But in November 2016 he was ‘‘exited’’ from another programme due to a ‘‘misconduct’’. He was also caught with ‘‘improvised tattoo devices’’ and ‘‘two shanks’’.
He began seeing a psychologist once a week due to mental health concerns. The psychologist referred to Finch ‘‘needing to develop a structured release proposal’’.
By his final parole report in September 2017, Finch had new charges of serious assault on multiple prison guards.
It was then Finch senior says Finch was diagnosed as schizophrenic, but was only held in a mental health facility while sectioned under the Mental Health Act for three months.
It was the healthiest his grandfather had seen him.
‘‘I found he was in a different state of mind. You could talk to him logically.’’
Finch says his grandson was then left in reintegration accommodation on release about two years ago, but was back on drugs and reoffended within days.
He understands Finch junior ‘‘took medication for a while’’ until drugs took over.
‘‘It’s easy to say that he doesn’t want help, that’s because his frontal lobe hasn’t developed.
‘‘It’s got to be compulsion rather than voluntary.’’
Finch says his grandson is ‘‘one of thousands’’ of prisoners with unresolved mental health issues.
‘‘It’s got to start when they go behind the wire."
‘‘Address the root cause and you might get a better outcome to reduce reoffending.’’
PLEA FOR HELP
Finch senior’s concerns about the justice system failings led him to become a trustee with new lobby group Transforming Justice Foundation.
The foundation’s co-founder Scott Guthrie has twice warned Corrections staff, Justice Minister Andrew Little and Corrections Minister Kelvin Davies about Finch junior.
In May he wrote to them that Finch’s case ‘‘without intervention now could end up costing a human life’’.
Finch was an occupant of a stolen car and sole survivor of a police chase in Christchurch on December 5, 2018, that ended with the deaths of Dennis Tunnicliffe and Renee Percy, who was pregnant.
Guthrie warned that Finch confessed the police chase came after a lengthy session of smoking methamphetamine.
And that when he is released next time, ‘‘he intends to kill someone simply because then he can come back to prison for 20-25 years and not have to worry about court or judges again for a long time’’.
Kelvin Davis responded in June saying he was ‘‘extremely concerned’’and thanked him for bringing it to his attention.
His concerns ‘‘were immediately passed on to Corrections for urgent attention and investigation’’.
‘‘I feel comfortable that everything is being done by Corrections to address the situation.’’
Guthrie wrote to Little on October 1 about Finch being a ‘‘dangerous, troubled prison inmate’’ repeatedly talking about wanting to kill.
He had ‘‘little if any rehabilitation or intervention because legislation doesn’t require an inmate to undergo educational rehabilitation while on remand’’.
He warned that Finch, ‘‘having spent over 12 months in prison, needing help, will be released unrehabilitated and still a real threat to the community and himself’’.
Guthrie told Stuff Finch needs more than drug rehab, ‘‘he needs psychiatric intervention’’.
‘‘The fact is that Frank clearly says he could kill someone and yet the judiciary is still quite relaxed about releasing him back in to the community.’’
The average offender has 42 prior convictions before getting to prison, but there should be intervention on their first or second offence, he says.
‘‘Give courts the power to keep people behind bars for education or medical reasons until they are ready to come out.’’
91 PER CENT OF PRISONERS HAVE HAD MENTAL ILLNESS
Corrections Department deputy national commissioner Andy Milne says ‘‘safety is our top priority’’ in Finch’s management in prison and on release.
Throughout his time in custody, he has been referred to and participated in a number of treatment programmes.
‘‘Despite not always successfully completing these programmes, a significant amount of work continues to be carried out by our multidisciplinary team of staff to assist him in addressing the causes of his offending, alongside his drug and alcohol issues and mental wellbeing.’’
Corrections deals with ‘‘the country’s most challenging, dangerous and complex people’’.
Sixty-two per cent of prisoners had a mental health or substance abuse disorder in the last 12 months, and ‘‘91 percent have had a lifetime diagnosis’’.
The disorders often went undetected or were not treated prior to prison. For women in prison, two-thirds have suffered family violence, rape and/or sexual assault, more than 50 per cent have post-traumatic stress disorder, and three-quarters have diagnosed mental health problems.
‘‘While someone is in prison, we do as much as we can to reduce the likelihood of them coming back, and to address any mental health and addiction issues that they come into our care with."
But Guthrie and Finch senior believe no prisoner gets effective mental health and drug addiction support unless serving a long-term jail sentence.
Finch will be released next month, but Guthrie predicts he will soon be back. Both he and Finch senior hope that won’t be at the cost of anyone’s life.
‘‘The system has failed him no end, right from the youth system. Whatever they’re doing is not working.’’ Rod Finch