Prison debacle shreds reputations
NECESSARY they may be, but Parliament’s stringent security measures of recent years have had one spinoff that those summoned to a minister’s office for a dressing down have good reason to curse.
The reduction in the number of entry points to the Beehive has turned the trek to the ministerial suites into a veritable ‘‘perp walk’’, as private prison bosses from Serco discovered on their way up to see Corrections Minister Sam Lotu-liga on Thursday. Seeing the media throng awaiting their arrival, they must have wished desperately for an opportunity to duck in through a back entrance, as used to be possible. But being forced to face up to the media frenzy should at least have impressed upon them the pressure the minister is under over allegations of violence and murder at Mt Eden prison. Apparently not, however.
Hauled into Lotu-liga’s office with a warning to come clean on any further violent incidents at Mt Eden prison, Serco’s bosses gave him an assurance there were none.
The blaring debacle that unfolded in the following hours saw Corrections hit the alarm button after a further incident involving an injured Mt Eden inmate making serious allegations about his treatment at the Serco-run prison.
Lotu-liga had only hours before assured Parliament there were no further cases based on his meeting with Serco’s bosses. He hadn’t so much been hung out to dry by Serco as hung, drawn and quartered with some tar and feather rubbed into his wounds.
Retaliation was as swift as it was unexpected yesterday. Corrections announced it was taking over management of Mt Eden prison from Monday.
Lotu-Iiga’s ministerial reputation is in tatters. Had he handled the allegations about fight clubs and violence with more urgency from the start, matters may not have spun out of control.
It is not just the minister’s reputation that may now be beyond salvaging. The Government’s roll-out of welfare programmes to the private sector has also
Scott McNairn from Serco arrives at Parliament to meet with Corrections Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga. been dealt a crushing blow.
Allegations about Serco’s management of Mt Eden prison have been circulating for months.
Labour MP Kelvin Davis raised the death of inmate Nick Evans at a select committee weeks ago, and referred to prisoners being dropped off a balcony.
Fuelling the fire are reports from Auckland lawyers of inmates regularly turning up to see them with black eyes and broken bones.
Prisoners have been on lockdown for days and Lotu-liga confirmed on Wednesday an inmate revolt that required the intervention of a Corrections response team. But he refused to call it a riot. The picture painted by the unfolding Mt Eden debacle is of a prison that is badly understaffed and at crisis point – and a Government with about as much interest as Serco in throwing that open to public scrutiny.
In the case confirmed by Corrections on Thursday, the inmate involved had been transferred out of Mt Eden with his injuries. This is central to claims made by Davis, who has alleged bashings and an initiation practice involving new inmates being thrown off a landing.
Davis accuses Serco of transferring prisoners injured in such incidents to state-run facilities to avoid clocking up penalties that can be incurred under its contract with the Government.
Those allegations have now gained enough credence to warrant a wider investigation. And the questions they raise go well beyond the walls of Mt Eden, to the failure of Corrections and the Government to heed the early warning signs. Some of those warning signs appear to go back to the Government’s previous term, when the prison officers’ union reported serious incidents.
The then-corrections minister Anne Tolley’s reaction seems to have been that they were ‘‘unsubstantiated’’ and not meriting investigation.
The collective shoulder shrug from the Government underscored the attitude that anyone criticising the private prison experiment was a stirrer.
When Davis raised the death of an inmate from a ruptured lung, Lotu-liga attacked him for ‘‘making things up’’ and exploiting the tragedy for political gain.
The stock response has been that any complaints were ideologically driven and lacked any merit because they were driven by opposition to the Government’s privatisation model.
The Government knows meanwhile that the public will hardly be shocked by accounts of violence inside prison and it is on safe ground politically.
But ideology cuts both ways – and the crisis throws a serious rock in the path of the Government’s planned reforms in other areas where the private prison experience has been held up as a template.
Serco has even been touted as a possible private provider of child welfare services under those reforms.
Tolley was touting Serco’s success only last month when talking about the rollout of social services to private sector providers. She cited its Wiri prison in South Auckland as delivering ‘‘10 per cent better than the public service in rehabilitation’’.
Stories about inmates receiving laptops to improve their education have boosted the Government’s spin that the private sector is doing it better and smarter. This week’s revelations seriously undermine the spin and put the Government on notice that the path ahead on wider privatisation is fraught.
The Mt Eden experience raises serious questions not only about Serco, but about the extent to which a commercial model incentivises its providers to cut staffing levels, or protect their bonuses by keeping a lid on potential contract breaches – like assaults, violence and riots.
Politically, the Government might think that those questions won’t trouble the public too much with the care of prisoners. But courting a debacle of this scale in the care of vulnerable children would be political suicide. Prime Minister John Key on a video by son Max of their family holiday in Hawaii that copped flak from some as showing them as out of touch.
WINNER
Labour MP Kelvin Davis: His pursuit of Serco and Corrections Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga over allegations of a coverup of a prison inmate’s death raises serious questions about the private prison operator.
LOSER
Corrections boss Ray Smith: His reputation as a safe pair of hands is unravelling after the Philip Smith debacle and now Mt Eden prison.
WALLY
Sam Lotu-Iiga: Given the string of allegations that have emerged, Davis’s questions deserved better than the minister’s bluster that he was making things up.
MEDIA MELEE
When Serco bosses turned up at the Beehive for their ‘‘please explain’’ meeting with Corrections bosses it turned into even more of a melee than the usual media scrum. One cameraman went flying and got some very nice footage of the sky. There was further disruption, meanwhile, when a dreadlocked member of the public turned up on his bike and started pestering journalists and security guards with some very odd questions about the prime minister. Unsurprisingly, the name Serco Circus quickly stuck.