Judgment causes rethink on timing of sex offenders' rehabilitation

The Corrections Department may have to reconsider the way treatment programmes are allocated to some of New Zealand's worst offenders.

In a recent judgment the Court of Appeal said it was concerned that repeat sex offender Rollo Charles Phelps apparently did not have the chance to do a rehabilitation course in time for his first parole hearing after 10 years in jail.

The court, Justice Susan Glazebrook, Justice William Young and Justice Mark O'Regan, said that to ensure Phelps had a proper chance to make a case for release, it might have been better if he had been assessed for a sexual offending course earlier.

He could then have finished it by the time he was eligible for parole.

Corrections psychological service director David Riley said the court's comments had to be taken seriously.

The prison service and psychological service would review the issue.

Phelps is serving the open-ended sentence of preventive detention for attempting to sodomise a seven-year-old intellectually disabled boy at Christmas 1994.

He became eligible for parole last month. On January 19 the board refused to release him.

The Court of Appeal also dismissed an appeal against Phelps' sentence.

The timing of treatment for prisoners on preventive detention is before the court in a civil case awaiting hearing.

Two men - five-time rapist Michael Carroll and three-time rapist Allan Brian Miller - say the Corrections Department is breaching international legal obligations to give treatment.

Their lawyer, Tony Ellis, said the Phelps judgment was "immensely helpful".

Preventive detention inmates had no realistic hope of release until they finished treatment courses, he said.

Mr Riley said the department believed treatment was most effective just before release and it timed programmes to end close to prisoners' likely release dates.

- NZPA