In his recent lawsuits, Genge has been contesting his jail security classification as a low to medium-risk prisoner.
His argument is that as a result of this classification, he is unable to participate in rehabilitative and reintegrative activities, which are available only for prisoners with a lower “minimum” risk classification.
Because he is unable to do the courses, he argues, he has been unable to demonstrate to the Parole Board that he should be freed from jail.
Genge was jailed for life with a minimum non-parole period of 15 years after raping and murdering 22-year-old Christchurch woman Anne Maree Ellens in the grounds of the Christchurch East primary school in September 1994.
While Ellens was heavily intoxicated, Genge and co-accused Samuel Kirner and Michael October took her into the school, raped her and savagely beat her to death.
Her semi-naked body was found on the school steps the next morning.
The three men were jailed in October 1995. Genge was 19 years old at the time.
Since then, Genge has taken more than 20 appeals and applications to the courts about his conviction, sentencing and aspects of his treatment in prison.
In 2019, he went all the way to the Supreme Court trying to reopen an appeal against his rape conviction that he had abandoned 21 years earlier. He was unsuccessful.
In his latest court action, Genge argued that the way his security clearance was determined - through a statistics-based measure known as the “RoC*RoI” - was unlawful.
Roc*RoI is the Department of Corrections’ core risk assessment measure, and it stands for “risk of (re)conviction multiplied by risk of (re)imprisonment”.
The tool draws on statistics from 133,000 criminal histories and uses 32 inputs drawn from an individual’s circumstances - such as age, the number of convictions, or total years in prison - to produce a number used to predict that individual’s risk of reoffending within five years.
In submissions to the High Court in 2021, Genge said that his RoC*RoI score had been consistently higher than 0.7 since 2003. This would suggest his risk of reoffending if released would be 70 per cent.
He told the High Court that, because he had been sentenced to prison for more than five years for a sexual or violent offence, it was impossible for him to be reduced to a minimum security classification that would allow him to participate in rehabilitation programmes.
However, the High Court found that the use of the tool did not inevitably result in a low-medium security classification for Genge. Corrections staff were able to override it.
The court said this was confirmed by Genge’s own classification history, which had ranged from low to high and back to low-medium over the years.
The High Court dismissed his application for a declaration that his rights had been breached, and for compensation.
Genge then tried to take a claim about his prison classification and the consequences for him to the Court of Appeal, only to have a registrar decline his application for a waiver of any court costs to be paid if he lost the case in that court.
“The registrar found the appeal lacks merit. I agree,” Justice Miller said.
He declined an application for a review of the registrar’s decision and said that security of $7060 must be paid by June 16 if Genge wanted to continue.
Genge represented himself in his latest High Court and Court of Appeal bids. He has previously said he does not trust lawyers, and has refused to apply for legal aid.
The courts have variously described Genge’s lawsuits as “vexatious”, or ill-conceived and prone to failure.
Last year, he was ordered to pay $2500 in costs after taking a dispute about prison discipline all the way to the Supreme Court, and losing.
Genge sought to reopen two disciplinary matters that went against him when he appeared before “visiting justices” in prison.
On one charge, he and another prisoner were found to be sparring in breach of prison rules in April 2017.
Genge argued that the sparring, in which his partner was holding up jandals as pads, was part of an exercise regime.
On the second charge, it was found that Genge refused to obey an officer’s lawful order to return to his cell during a power outage in July 2019.
