Commission releases annual report on OPCAT

Human Rights Commission
Media release
16 December 2010

Commission releases annual report on OPCAT

The third annual report on detention facilities in New Zealand highlights improvements as a result of monitoring visits.

Examples include agreements to:
• cease use of a substandard facility
• upgrade a facility to meet minimum health and safety standards
• alter an exercise area to allow improved access to the outdoors
• reduce lockdown hours
• provide children and young people with a say in how residences could be improved
• further strengthen the current system relating to convicted offenders subject to hybrid orders involving both a sentence of imprisonment and compulsory treatment, to assure their access to the Parole Board.

Monitoring of detention facilities is carried out under New Zealand’s obligations to the Optional Protocol on the Convention against Torture (OPCAT). The organisations responsible for this are the Children’s Commissioner, the Independent Police Conduct Authority, the Inspector of Service Penal Establishments, the Ombudsmen and the Human Rights Commission.

Monitoring Places of Detention reports on the third year of regular visits to places where people are detained in New Zealand, “in order to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

As part of research and evaluation under OPCAT, the Independent Police Conduct Authority, the Children’s Commissioner and the Human Rights Commission have agreed to undertake a joint thematic review of the treatment of and issues affecting children and young people detained in New Zealand Police custody. Further information on the joint thematic review is available on the Independent Police Complaints Authority website.

Download Monitoring Places of Detention, the annual report of activities under the Optional Protocol against Torture (PDF 900Kb, Word 280Kb).

ENDS

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