Balancing act on prison violence

Attacks on prison staff have been rising over the past 18 months but some Corrections officers complain that they are effectively prevented from defending themselves. One officer told Stuff that, ‘‘We can’t be proactive, so if a prisoner is behaving aggressively, we can’t assume that he’s going to try to hit us. We have to wait until he does hit us.’’

A Corrections officer at the maximum security unit at Auckland Prison, which houses New Zealand’s most violent offenders, wants prison staff to be exempt from prosecution for taking action to prevent violence.

That is an understandable call to make, but efforts to shield those we charge with upholding the law from its consequences are misguided. The state grants some people, such as police and prison staff, the ability to enforce the law using violence but also places restrictions so that licence for the use of force does not become a licence for abuse.

That is the nature of the bargain society has made: in order for the legal right to act with violence to have moral weight, we must ensure its use is justified. Creating legally immune captors will undoubtedly lead to abuse of prisoners and a more violent work environment for Corrections officers. And in a wider sense, a lack of legal consequences for unjustified violence, or even the belief that such consequences will not be faced, leads to a climate of unreasonable force, lack of trust in law enforcement, and less safe communities.

But the same applies to violence by prisoners. We must ensure that attacks by prisoners are reported, recorded, and have legal consequences. For imprisonment to be legitimate, attacks behind bars should be prosecuted in the same way they would be in the streets, and parole boards should be hearing about prisoners’ violence, even if minor cases don’t lead to prosecution.

The same Corrections officer who called for his colleagues to be exempt from prosecution for defending themselves said many victims did not report assaults because they doubted perpetrators would be held accountable. If a system is not used because it is believed to be ineffective, then it is ineffective.

Given that the number of assaults against prison staff rose by 82 per cent between 2015-16 and 2019-20, and that preliminary numbers show 2020-21 is on track to be the worst year since 2016 for prisoner attacks on staff, it is concerning to hear that Corrections officers have little faith that there would be accountability for attacks on them. New Zealand has the highest proportion of offenders in prison for interpersonal offences in the developed world, meaning our prison population is over-represented with violent offenders compared to other countries’ prisoners. We ask a lot of Corrections officers, and the least we should offer in return is a robust system to deal with the dangers of their jobs.

Of course, the job of being responsible for the safety and welfare of the most violent people in our society will always have inherent dangers, so the best way to reduce the number of attacks by prisoners is to reduce the number of prisoners. According to a Corrections Department report, New Zealand has one of the highest imprisonment rates in the developed world. Getting to the root causes of that troubling statistic will go a long way to making the job of imprisoning people safer.

Creating legally immune captors will undoubtedly lead to abuse of prisoners and a more violent work environment for Corrections officers.