'Third World' police cells

The "kitchen" in the cell block at the Papakura police station consists of two freezers and a microwave.

One freezer is packed full of small plastic takeaway-style dinners, providing an evening meal for the five adults and three youths who were staying in the 27-cell block when the Herald visited this month - with plenty more for the occasional times when 50 or more people have been crammed in.

The other freezer contains their lunches: wrapped pies and frozen fruit juice.

The pies, and the dinners, appeared to be identical. There is no variety in this menu, because police assume that people will only stay in their cells for a night or two while waiting to appear in court.

But as the nation's prisons have filled to overflowing, police cells have been called in to hold surplus prisoners for days and sometimes weeks. The Corrections Department says it approved 616 cases in the last seven months of last year where prisoners were held in police cells for at least a week.

In the Papakura cells, two Asian men on immigration charges were sleeping in one cell on mattresses on the concrete floor. One of them had been there for five days.

Opposite them a Polynesian youth banged on the window to get our attention. He at least had a raised concrete sleeping platform for his mattress. His only other furniture was a toilet.

One of the two showers in the block is private and can be used for women, the other is open with no doors or curtains. Police Inspector Dave Simpson says prisoners are only showered one at a time.

There is no exercise yard, but prisoners are let out into a corridor at intervals to walk around or smoke. Inspector Simpson says they spend "80-90 per cent of their time" locked in their cells.

Unlike a Corrections prison, there is no television. One of the Asian men was reading old magazines. In a bare "recreation room", Inspector Simpson proudly displayed about half a dozen old books for prisoners to read which had been donated by the Papakura library.

Compared with some provincial police cells, these are good conditions. When Police announced an upgrade of Rotorua's 21 cells last September, they agreed that it would be reasonable to call the existing cells "Third World".

A report by the Prisoners' Aid and Rehabilitation Society in June said there was "a continual problem with fouling of cells, disabling of toilets and graffiti", with inadequate ventilation to reduce "the stench of fouled cells, heated bodies or concentrated disinfectant".

"Although intended for 19 inmates, the cells have held 38 at one time."

In January, the Corrections Department and its unions finally reached a deal to increase beds in the main prisons, partly by more doubling up with two prisoners to a cell. Since then there has been no more use of court cells, and police cell use by Corrections nationally has dropped from around 200 a night late last year to 129 at the latest weekly tally last Monday.

But it may be only a temporary respite. Unless the rise in prisoner numbers abates, Corrections chief executive Barry Matthews warned last week that by June "we are going to be faced with the same issues we have faced over the last year".