Commission endorses prison transport report

Chief Human Rights Commissioner Rosslyn Noonan said the report into the transport of prisoners by the Office of the Ombudsmen released today was a thorough examination of a timely human rights issue.

“The Commission endorses every recommendation made in the report. Prisoners have been deprived of their liberty but that should not mean they are deprived of fundamental human rights,” she said today.

The investigation was prompted by the death of youth prisoner Liam Ashley in a Chubb security van on 25 August last year. Ms Noonan said the report was another sharp reminder that New Zealand has failed to effectively integrate human rights standards into the day to day responsibilities of the State or the private sector.

For that reason the Commission strongly supported New Zealand’s ratification in March of the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT). It provides a comprehensive approach to preventing human rights abuses in prisons and other places of detention.

The Protocol requires regular visits to places of detention by independent national and international experts to create a constructive dialogue with authorities at institutional and national levels.

Under the protocol the Commission becomes a central national preventive mechanism coordinating the work of other agencies to make unannounced inspections of places of detention. The agencies responsible are the Police Complaints Authority, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, the Office of the Ombudsmen and the Inspector of Service Penal Establishments in the Office of Judge Advocate General of the Defence Force.

Ms Noonan said, “Each agency is developing a programme of inspections. The hope is that this more systematic, preventive approach to human rights monitoring will help to ensure that deaths like those of Liam Ashley do not happen again”.

The inspections will provide feedback to organisations who detain people so they can satisfy issues of international human rights, including the basic right outlined under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states: “Everyone has the right to…security of person”.

The protocol covers prisons and police cells Ms Noonan said, as well as New Zealanders experiencing involuntary detention in children’s residences, youth justice facilities and those detained involuntarily in psychiatric and dementia wards.

ENDS

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