Prisoners line up for $8m in compo

Mark Burton

Convicted criminals are lining up to claim more than $8 million in compensation from the Crown for alleged mistreatment in prisons.

Their claims are bringing renewed pressure for the Government to legislate against payouts.

The Crown faces 21 outstanding claims, including at least one from a convicted murderer.

Some of the prisoners claim a "behaviour management regime" at Paremoremo in the 1990s kept them in solitary confinement for long periods in which they were denied changes of clothes and bedding and made to clean toilets and washbasins with shared buckets of water.

Others are waiting for verdicts from several appealed cases involving 49 other Paremoremo inmates, including nine destined for the Supreme Court, and for the lapse next year of legislation entitling their victims to lodge claims for any compensation awarded.

Those nine sought $1.35 million and five of them, including convicted murderer Christopher Taunoa, were awarded $140,000 with costs of $358,000.

Taunoa, serving life for killing Sanson publican Hugh Lynch in 1996, had his payout lifted by $10,000 to $65,000 in December by the Court of Appeal but the money has been frozen pending Supreme Court challenges by both the Crown and the nine prisoners.

Their lawyer, Tony Ellis, has two other claims before the Court of Appeal on behalf of 40 other prisoners but told the Herald yesterday that these predated last year's passage of legislation allowing victims of crime to make their own claims on any compensation awarded.

Mr Ellis said he saw little point in lodging claims for about a further 150 Paremoremo inmates until the Prisoners and Victims Claims Act, which he intends challenging before the United Nations, lapses next year.

The claims have brought a call from the Sensible Sentencing Trust for the Government to legislate against the right of prisoners to seek compensation, although spokesman Garth McVicar said this did not condone mistreatment of prisoners.

Justice Minister Mark Burton has said that denying compensation to inmates was the Government's preferred option, but would be contrary to New Zealand's international obligations.

But Mr McVicar said Finland, the Netherlands and Britain, which he visited in a study tour in February with Corrections Minister Damien O'Connor, were bound by the same international obligations yet their legislators were amazed New Zealand prisoners could receive compensation.

"They don't pay their prisoners compensation - if any problem occurs it goes through the normal court processes, whether it be officers abusing prisoners or vice versa."

He said he was keen to ensure prisons were run humanely, but compensation was repugnant to victims of crime, especially those whose loved ones had been murdered.

National's law and order spokesman Simon Power blamed pressure from prison overcrowding for the millions of dollars of claims, and noted a 68 per cent increase in the number of assaults of guards by inmates in the past two years, to 180 in 2005-06.

He said victims of crime should be automatically entitled to compensation paid to their oppressors, rather than having to relive their ordeals by applying through the legal system.

Mr O'Connor was unavailable for comment but a spokesman said many of the claims related to alleged abuses while National was in power, and the number of injury assault of guards had declined dramatically since the late 1990s.