Power Simon: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Power Simon: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:650;Page:18600] 
5.  
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
 to the  
Minister of Corrections 
: Does he have confidence in his department; if so why? 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Corrections) 
: 
 Yes much more confidence than was possible 9 years ago when National was in Government for the following reasons. With a significant improvement in prison security the escape rate has fallen by a massive 84 percent. With better controls on the contraband that enters the prisons drug tests show that the number of inmates who have taken drugs has fallen from an average of 34 percent in 1998 down to 14 percent—one-third of what it was. More inmates some 60 percent of sentenced prisoners are now in work more are attending intensive drug and alcohol rehabilitation and more are accessing literacy and numeracy programmes. Finally I say that all of those advances have been achieved while the Department of Corrections has coped with 3200 net additional inmates since 1999 a 71 percent rise because of the enactment of tougher laws and the provision of more police. 
Simon Power 
: Can he confirm that eight inmates from Auckland and Spring Hill prisons have been charged with involvement in a $5 million methamphetamine drug ring from behind bars and can he also confirm that it has taken 7 years to introduce cellphone-blocking technology that there are still only four prisons that have that technology and that they do not include the Auckland and Spring Hill prisons? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: What I can confirm is that because of better monitoring and intelligence work within the corrections system Department of Corrections officers working with police and customs officers have now successfully cracked an external drug ring. This was much-praised work by the Department of Corrections and by the police who say it will significantly interrupt methamphetamine production in the Auckland and North Island regions. On the second question I say that although National did nothing for 9 years about cellphone use within prisons by February next year every prison in our country will have cellphone jamming a fact much admired by our colleagues across the Tasman who are now working to emulate New Zealand’s example. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: How effective has the Crime Prevention Information Capability strategy recently developed by the Department of Corrections been? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: It has been very effective indeed. The goal was to detect to prevent and to prosecute crimes using intelligence gathered within the prison system. We know that a very large number of gang leaders and members of organised crime are now imprisoned. They endeavour to continue to commit crime from within prison and what the Department of Corrections has successfully done through monitoring telephone calls and through other intelligence-gathering work has been to prosecute cases against those inmates and to assist the police in very effective operations to disrupt organised crime. I congratulate the Department of Corrections on that achievement. 
Simon Power 
: Can the Minister confirm that at this time last year the previous Minister Damien O’Connor stated that cellphone-blocking technology would be in all prisons by now but that that is now not expected to occur for another 6 months; and can he confirm further that Auckland Central Remand Prison used to be the only prison that had cellphone blocking but that that ended when the Government cancelled the private management of that prison? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: No I cannot confirm that but I can confirm that already seven prisons have cellphone jamming or have that system being installed. Not one prison in Australia including the private contracted prisons has yet got to that point. 
Simon Power 
: Can the Minister confirm that the monitoring of all landline calls made by inmates started only in June this year yet the enabling legislation was passed in October 1999; and why did nothing happen for so long when an internal memo from 2004 warned: “The fact that legislation is in place and no monitoring is occurring is a continued risk for the department’s credibility.”? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: What I can confirm is that although there was absolutely no telephone monitoring at all under 9 years of the last National Government every telephone call made from a pay phone in every prison in New Zealand is now recorded and calls are monitored on a targeted basis and a random basis. I have had the opportunity to listen in to some of those calls while information that implicated people in gang activity outside the prison was carefully recorded taken down for use in evidence and later used to convict organised criminals outside the prison. 
Simon Power 
: Does the Minister stand by his statement in October 1999 that “We are left with a situation where there are no constraints on cellphones in prisons other than security measures which have proven utterly inadequate in detecting cellphones.” and does that mean that in the decade that it has taken for his Government to block cellphones in all prisons security measures have continued to be “utterly inadequate”? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Just to correct the member I say this Government will not have had a decade in Government until about this time next year. I say to that member his Government failed utterly to put anything in place to jam telephones. Not only did that Government not jam telephones but also I have a copy of a remark made by the chief executive of the prison system in the last year of the National Government stating that our maximum security prison Paremoremo prison had a fence around it not to stop prisoners escaping but just to slow them down on the way out. I have a report from Manawatu Prison admitted to be correct by Nick Smith the then Minister of Corrections that 42 percent of the inmates in Simon Power’s local Manawatu Prison were on drugs. Forty-two percent of inmates at that prison were on drugs and 41 percent of inmates at Rimutaka Prison were on drugs. Simon Power’s local paper the  
Evening Standard 
 said a typical week at Manawatu Prison would see 20 to 30 nocturnal visitors climb the six-wire fence reach through the window at Manawatu Prison and pass drugs through the window. That was the shambles that we inherited from Simon Power’s Government even in his own patch.