Ex-con back behind bars to fight jail privatisation

Brett Collins was allowed into Mt Eden Prison yesterday after initially being refused. Photo / Martin Sykes

The gates of Mt Eden Prison opened yesterday to a former convicted bank robber campaigning against privatising jails, despite an official statement that he would not be let in.

Ngaruawahia-born Brett Collins, who served 10 years in an Australian jail for a bank robbery, now leads Sydney-based Justice Action. The organisation helped to push the New South Wales Government into abandoning plans last Friday to privatise one of two state jails it had earmarked for private management.

Quakers paid for him to come to Auckland to speak at a public meeting last night against a bill allowing private management of New Zealand prisons. Submissions on the bill close on May 22.

He applied to the Corrections Department on April 26 for permission to talk about the bill with prisoner committees in Mt Eden and Paremoremo jails, but a department spokesman said yesterday morning that the visit was "not possible", partly because there were no elected committees of prisoners. But when Mr Collins turned up at the prison gates anyway at 2pm with three local activists, acting prison manager Gary Stock eventually gave the group an hour with four prisoners on the jail's welfare committee.

Mr Collins said the four prisoners and the prison officers he met all opposed privatisation, and the prisoners felt "resentful".

"They objected to multinationals coming in and making a profit out of them sitting longer in jail," he said.

Maori Party MP Hone Harawira was invited to speak in support of privatisation at last night's meeting, organised by Global Peace and Justice Auckland, but had another engagement.

He said he would not be particularly happy to see multinationals running a local jail - "but by the same token neither am I particularly happy to see the New Zealand Corrections Department running it".

"What would you suggest that the Maori Party did," he asked, "sit back and let things continue the way they are, or do what we can to change things?"

* On the web: www.justiceaction.org.au