Clendon David: Urgent Debates — Mt Eden Corrections Facility—Serco’s PerformanceText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Urgent Debates — Mt Eden Corrections Facility—Serco’s Performance[Sitting date: 21 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5122. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green):I would like to begin my comments by complimenting our colleague Mr Davis on the work that he has done to date on this issue and on bringing this debate to the House today because it is a matter that needs to be debated. It needs the light of day to be shone on it so that people can get a better view of what is actually happening in our prisons on a day-to-day basis.The president of the Corrections Association of New Zealand Beven Hanlon is on record saying that the events around fighting and drug use and so on in the Serco prison—Mt Eden Corrections Facility—were known to the authorities at least 18 months ago. I quote Mr Hanlon: “I can tell you now that on 9 July 2014 the chief executive the national commissioner and the northern regional commissioner all received that report…”. This afternoon we have heard from the Minister of Corrections that the lack of response to that report was for the reason that these matters were unsubstantiated. That is not a compelling or a reassuring response. With all the resources available to both the Department of Corrections and Serco why were these matters not substantiated or put to rest? Why did it take the emergence of an illegal video to bring this matter to light and to bring it to this debate today?It is remarkable that we are hearing accusations that the stories emerging from within the prisons are being made up. Like Mr Davis I also have had contact in the last few days with people working within the sector who have very similar tales. So if the stories are indeed being made up then it is a very widespread conspiracy. The unfortunate fact is that these people are frightened to come out publicly and put their names to these events and describe events happening in our prisons because they fear for their jobs. That is a very unhappy situation. It reflects a very unhealthy culture within our prisons. I suggest that a select committee inquiry would be the appropriate place for these people to come forward with some safety and make statements about what they have observed and what they believe to be happening so that we can deal with it at that level.There is some irony in the fact that the appalling events that have been occurring at the Serco-managed facility have come to light via modern technology through video taken with cellphones and presumably with the phone or the SIM card being smuggled out. I say “ironic” because Serco tells us that it is in fact technology that enables it to run a very different staffing model in its prisons compared with our public sector prisons—our Department of Corrections - run institutions—particularly in terms of the staff-inmate ratio. Earlier this year we heard directly from Serco’s Asia-Pacific operations manager Scott McNairn. He confirmed that each unit at the new Wiri Prison—this is including the high-security unit—will contain 60 inmates and two officers. Even my arithmetic enables me to say that that is a staff-inmate ratio of 1:30 even for the high-security wing. In the public prisons that ratio is 1:15—double the number of prison officers. Low security in the public sector has a ratio of 1:20; still 50 percent more officers on deck watching those inmates in low security than in Serco high security.I suspect that points to a lot of the underlying reasons why these events have occurred. We simply do not have the people on the ground. We do not have the trained resourced prison officers in the wings observing what is going on being the eyes and ears of management building relationships with the inmates and making those prisons as safe as they can be. The reason why the private operators run a lower staff-inmate ratio is all about profit. Most of the costs of running a prison are embedded costs. About the only wiggle room you have to try to generate profit when running a prison is staffing and I believe that what we are seeing happening in Serco-managed facilities is a direct result of their cutting corners on staff. And this is in the first couple of years. Imagine 5 or 10 years down the track of their 25-year contract. We are going to see some very serious unhelpful and positively dangerous outcomes because we have the situation where a private company is trying to drive a commercial profit out of operating a prison and that is simply not acceptable.I would like to comment on the investigation and the terms of reference. I am slightly puzzled by the Minister’s insistence earlier today that this is actually a review not an investigation because and I quote “The terms of reference for the investigation of the circumstances surrounding organised prisoner-on-prisoner fighting (‘fight club’) access to cellphones etc. at Mt Eden Corrections Facility…”. Is this a review or is it an investigation? I sincerely hope that it is the latter. A review to me indicates that you have a once-over-lightly; a quick look at what went on. This needs to be an in-depth review in order to get right to the bottom of what has been going on and of what is continuing to occur on a daily basis to ensure that we are putting in place mechanisms to ensure that we do not see this sort of activity going on in our prisons.My challenge to the Minister of Corrections would be that the primary investigating agency in this investigation should be the Office of the Ombudsmen. I would argue that the Department of Corrections and most certainly Serco—whatever investigative mechanism it has—are hopelessly compromised in this matter. It should be the Ombudsman that is the lead agency. It has the investigative power. It has the authority. It has the confidence of this Parliament to be objective and to be disinterested. And that is where the responsibility should sit. There are experienced people within the Office of the Ombudsmen who understand how our prisons operate. There is a lot of experience there. The Department of Corrections’ investigation by default must be hopelessly compromised given that it has sat on this information for at least a year and arguably for 18 months. How can the public have any confidence? You can take it as a given that there will be a significant response rightly or wrongly that anything that the Department of Corrections produces can simply be written off as a whitewash. There is too much self-interest for the department too much egg on its face and too much potential political embarrassment for it—and there is too much commercial risk for Serco—to allow that form of investigation to take place.I would also like to reflect on the issue that Mr Davis raised earlier. I quote again from the terms of reference: “The investigation will pay particular attention to the last 3-month period to determine: [a number of matters]”. Actually the last 3-month period is not necessarily where the problem lies. The “particular attention” phrase does not say that there will not be a longer time horizon for the investigation. Why would you focus on the last 3 months of the period? I hope it is not because the Mt Eden facility did actually have at that time a much higher staff count than it would normally run with because it had officers who had completed their training but were not being transferred to the Wiri facility until it opened. Is it not interesting that the attempt to narrow the investigation in terms of time will overlap with the period when that Serco facility did have significant staff numbers on deck on the ground observing prison behaviour and actually seeing what was going on there?I am also seriously concerned about the matter of health services. Part of the terms of reference is to get information from the health service within the prison. I also have heard entirely credible people telling me that the practice has been to export the walking wounded from Mt Eden Corrections Facility to other prisons. The most extreme example which we heard about from Mr Davis was one that resulted in a death that may well have occurred as a result of one of these fight clubs. There has been a compelling and a credible series of comments from people to the effect that the people injured in these fights must have reasonably serious injuries. There are large fit men going at each other with some enthusiasm so there must at least be cuts bruises and visible injuries. Is it not unusual to say the least that people are arriving in other prisons with evidence of having been in fights and nothing has been reported about this? One would hope that in the health service which is unfortunately also delivered by the Department of Corrections—in our view health services in prisons should be delivered by a stand-alone health agency that is not concerned or allied with corrections—that those health incident reports would help to reveal what is or is not going on here. There is no question that violence has been under-reported at this prison unless there is a massive conspiracy between inmates prison officers management and NGOs working within the prisons. This investigation should be comprehensive and it should be led by the Office of the Ombudsmen.