Brian Rudman: Even jailers want disgraceful prison cleared out

Six years ago, then Corrections Minister Matt Robson was predicting that barbaric Mt Eden Prison would be closed by 2003.

Three years past this use-by date, the 19th century relic is still bulging at the seams despite a secret warning in 2004 from the Corrections Department that "there is a high likelihood of service failure, the consequences of which would be catastrophic".

By that, the department means "potential injury or loss of life", litigation by inmates' families and 381 prisoners needing alternative accommodation "for an indeterminate length of time".

The one light in all this murk is the musings of Corrections Minister Damien O'Connor, just back from a fact-finding tour of European prisons, to declare that New Zealand may be better served if up to 30 per cent - about 2250 - of our prison population were given community-based sentences instead. If that was to happen, Mt Eden's 420 beds could become redundant overnight.

But I suspect Mr O'Connor's common sense, like that of Mr Robson before him, will get lost in a Cabinet more beholden to the clattering tin drums of the law and order backwoodsmen than to the evidence gathered from trips to more liberal societies such as Finland and the Netherlands.

Which takes us back to Mt Eden and how best to empty it as quickly as possible. The damning Corrections Department report, flushed out of the system by National MP Simon Power, reveals that the department has been pushing for closure or "extensive refurbishment" of Mt Eden since at least 1995 and that successive Governments - both Labour and National - have deferred decisions "pending further review and analysis".

The documents released to Mr Power said there were five options for Mt Eden, all of which have been blanked out in order "to maintain the effective conduct of public affairs through the free and frank expressions of opinions by or between or to ministers ... and employees".

This censorship is rather dim-witted, given that the department's preferred option is revealed for all to see in its briefing paper to new minister Mr O'Connor after last September's general election.

This states that the department's recommended option was "to replace Mt Eden Prison with a new 420-bed facility nearby, on the same site as the Auckland Central Remand Prison (ACRP)" and that in December 2004, "Cabinet approved design funding of $6 million".

It added that "two work streams are under way. The first is designing the ACRP extension of 420 beds to replace the existing Mt Eden facility. The second is exploring the 'heritage' options for the use of the existing Mt Eden Prison".

A report to the Cabinet in November was to provide detailed implementation, costings and build options for it to consider. It seems that this Government, like many before it, has kicked again for touch.

Over the past year or so, Corrections has had on-going discussions with interested parties such as neighbouring Auckland Grammar, Auckland City and the Historic Places Trust over its plans.

The latter two are involved because the Scottish baronial folly that is the prison is a Category A listed building with the city council and has a B classification with the trust.

With neighbourhood protest likely to delay or stymie a new prison anywhere else in the city, the preference is to build a four or five storey prison within the boundaries of the present site, alongside the 381-bed remand prison opened in July 2000.

My inquiries suggest the existing prison will then be gentrified and re-used, possibly as an administration centre for the department.

But first things first. Clearing prisoners from this national disgrace is a priority. That even the jailers are clamouring for it underlines the urgency of the task.

The sensible, pragmatic and cheap way would be to follow the lead of more civilised countries and stop incarcerating so many minor offenders, if for no other reason than it doesn't work.

But if Labour is too scared to get off side with the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" lobby, it should at least connect with its humanitarian instincts and imprison people in civilised conditions.

Mt Eden Prison is far from that. The Corrections Department admits it is "substandard and unsafe in many respects", leaving the department "at risk of prosecution" for "serious non-compliance with building codes and standards, fire safety standards and health and safety requirements".

That successive governments have known of this and continue to do nothing is a scandal.