KEY POINTS:
A female prison officer has been placed on special leave after claims she assaulted and injured an inmate at the Auckland Region Women's Corrections Facility yesterday.
The alleged assault caps off a difficult week for the Corrections Department which is already facing a lawsuit lodged by one inmate and questions over how photographs taken inside the most secure prison in the country ended up in the hands of the media.
Corrections confirmed an incident involving an officer and an inmate had taken place and that the officer had been put on special leave while it was being investigated.
Prison sources told the Herald on Sunday that a female prisoner needed medical attention after the guard allegedly assaulted her. The prisoner is thought to have been in a cell alone at the time.
Prison officers' reputation has already taken a hit with 11 guards suspended from Rimutaka Prison north of Wellington, and four from Christchurch Prison after allegations of corruption.
Corrections chief executive Barry Matthews estimated the level of corruption was about 1 per cent - meaning about 38 guards throughout the service were corrupt.
He conceded that the department had not prosecuted corrupt guards as often as it could have in the past, but the policy had changed - where possible, prosecutions would now be taken.
Last week the Herald on Sunday was sent photographs taken with cellphones inside New Zealand's most secure prison with a message from Paremoremo prisoners: "If we could smuggle an elephant in here, the guards couldn't even find that."
But Matthews said Corrections would soon introduce new technology barring cellphone use by prisoners.
The department would invest in technology that would disable unauthorised mobile telephones, he said. It was a high-tech solution - a special scanner would reach behind the mobile phone number to find a unique identifying serial number, recorded on a phone's SIM card.
That number would be cross-referenced against a list of approved numbers.
If the number was not on the list, then the phone call - going into prison or coming from prison - would be disconnected. The technology would be instant, and no call would get through.
Matthews said the department expected to use a range of solutions, and the "smart jammer" was just one.
Of the pictures published today, Matthews said: "I'm not absolutely surprised... we have been finding cellphones in Auckland Prison. I'm not embarrassed by it. They [cellphones] are becoming increasingly smaller in terms of size and less metal content."
Prisoners had several ways of getting contraband inside prison walls. Shoes with hollowed-out heels had been found, SIM cards had been hidden inside nappies of babies brought in by visiting mothers, and some items were thrown over the prison walls.
- additional reporting Rebecca Lewis
