Drunk inmates swim in skip

Prisoners at Christchurch Men’s Prison downed homebrew and made a make-shift swimming pool out of a skip. Blair Ensor reports.

FIVE drunk men swimming and doing bombs into a water-filled rubbish skip – it could be a scene from a raucous student party.

Embarrassingly for the Department of Corrections, it occurred at Christchurch Men’s Prison and involved a group of violent inmates, including a highrisk sex offender who once infamously escaped from the jail in a food truck.

And it could have ended in death.

Guards were called to the October 29 incident in the prison’s engineering workshop, where a group of about 20 inmates, monitored by a single staff member, had been refurbishing rubbish skips under a Corrections contract with Waste Management.

They found a man lying barely conscious on the floor. He and four others had been climbing in and out of a skip filled with water while wearing their clothes. It is believed some had scaled structures and jumped into the makeshift swimming pool.

Sources say it quickly became apparent the inmates were heavily intoxicated and had likely been drinking homebrew – a potent mash-up of fermented fruit, sugar, bread and water.

As the guards attempted to bring the incident under control, one of the men allegedly attacked a guard with a screwdriver. She was wearing a stab-proof vest and escaped injury.

An inmate, understood to be Mark Anthony Taylor, was taken to Christchurch Hospital for treatment.

Taylor, a sex offender and burglar who is serving a sentence of preventive detention, escaped from the prison for 30 hours in 2002 by hiding in a departing food truck.

Given his history, he was closely guarded during his overnight stay in hospital.

Other inmates involved in the incident included James

Eddington, an armed robber who fired at police, and Kyle Livesey, a Mongrel Mob member who bashed a resigning ex-gang president.

An urgent review into what happened was ordered and the workshop was closed for several days.

Dozens of prison staff, including members of the Site Emergency Response Team – a specialist squad trained to carry out cell searches and respond to threats – carried out a sweep of the building looking for weapons and contraband.

They located homebrew, which had been made in the workshop. No weapons were found.

In a statement to the Sunday Star-Times, Corrections chief custodial officer Neil Beales said the five inmates involved in the drunken incident had their employment in the workshop ‘‘terminated’’.

Three had been transferred to Otago Corrections Facility.

He confirmed the alleged assault of a staff member during the incident had been referred to police to investigate.

‘‘This is clearly unacceptable. Prisoners who take part in employment activities and industry training are expected to take this privilege and responsibility seriously.’’

Beales rejected any suggestion the inmates had modified the skip so it could be used as a swimming pool, suggesting they had been more opportunistic.

‘‘As part of the quality assurance checks and to assess whether any additional work needs to be carried out on the skips, they are filled with water. Any holes could indicate structural weakness, and if the skip is lifted when full of material such as concrete, this could create a significant safety risk.’’