New Zealand’s Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier released on Monday a report identifying breaches of the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Auckland Prison.
The report follows an eight-day unannounced inspection of Auckland Prison, the country’s only maximum-security facility, which took place between January and February. Boshier wrote the report under the Crimes of Torture Act 1989 in his capacity as a National Preventive Mechanism. Although he noted that “there were some good practices” employed at the prison, he also found “some practices that required improvement and others that were of significant concern,” most notably two breaches of the Convention.
The first breach concerns “the unwarranted use of pepper spray on a prisoner” that Boshier’s inspectors reviewed CCTV footage of. According to the report, the footage showed that a prisoner was pepper-sprayed after “moving some of his personal belongings from his cell to the adjacent yard before setting off the sprinkler, and then standing in the yard waiting for staff response.” He complied with staff response, an order to “get down on his knees and put his hands behind his back,” but was subsequently pepper-sprayed. Boshier found that the use of pepper spray in that circumstance was not “a legitimate or necessary use of force.” Therefore, he considered it “a breach amounting to cruel treatment under Article 16 of the Convention.” He also found that the prison staff inaccurately reported the incident.
The second breach concerns prisoners’ privacy. Boshier found that in the Intervention Support Unit (ISU), wherein “prisoners deemed vulnerable or at risk, and those subject to segregation” are located, “[a]ll areas of ISU cells, including the toilets, were subject to CCTV monitoring.” Moreover, the CCTV footage could be viewed by anyone in the staff base given that the “footage was displayed in the staff area.” He found that “the ability to observe prisoners undressing, showering or using the toilet, either directly or via CCTV, is a serious breach of privacy and dignity, amounting to degrading treatment under Article 16 of the Convention.”
Other findings of concern to Boshier include a high, 25 percent volume of prisoners on remand; that the Department of Corrections’ “intention to shift from an operating model [centered] on ‘containment and management’ to one of ‘rehabilitation and reintegration’ is yet to be [realized]”; lengthy periods of segregation; that “some prisoners in maximum security were held on a regime of undocumented segregation”; and that most maximum-security prisoners “spent between 22–23 hours a day locked in their cells.”
Boshier made 37 recommendations, of which the Department of Corrections accepted 33 and “partially accepted four.” He noted that he “look[s] forward” to seeing results from the attention given to matters he identified as requiring “urgent attention” at a future inspection.
