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New Zealand Police AssociationSeptember 2004of their own). One of the Auckland prisoners was inneed of medication. Eventually, at 9.31 pm the prisonerneeding medication was transferred back to AucklandCentral Remand Prison and eight prisoners from Counties-Manukau were transferred to Waitakere.• Papakura - August 2 - prisoners block the holding celltoilets with items of clothing and the area is flooded.• Auckland Central - August 7 - 11 additional remandprisoners are delivered despite a threshold of nine remandprisoners being agreed. Papakura police are approachedto take eight of 28 remand prisoners in Auckland but therequest is declined, as is a request for extra blankets andmattresses. Two Chubb security guards were called inovernight.• Manukau District Court cells - two junior constablesand three Chubb guards are left in charge of 18 remandprisoners. There is no supervisor on duty. Staff are leftwithout milk or other items for breaks. Chubb failed toleave keys to some of the gates, which in an emergencysituation, could have resulted in serious consequences.• Manukau - August 9 - two of nine remand prisoners arefound to be asthmatics needing medication. There are 35prisoners in the cells (25 of them remand prisoners). Thereare no mattresses to sleep on for some prisoners and onlyblankets could be issued. Police staff buy remand prisonerscigarettes and then seek reimbursement from petty cash.• Auckland Central - August 13 (night shift) - An officer tellsPolice News there have been eight remand prisoner arrivals,eight Immigration Department detainees and 12 arrests.“He says: “We don’t have sufficient mattresses and wehaven’t even reached the busy part of the night yet.”• Papakura - August 13 - Auckland Central Remand Prisonforgets to advise Chubb security guards that they havea remand prisoner with bipolar disorder. He neededmedications twice daily but this was not supplied andwhen inquiries were made with prison staff they agreedto supply the medication but refused to have it delivered.Police had to send a constable from watch-house duty tothe prison to uplift the prisoner’s medication.• Auckland Central and Henderson - August 15 - staffmembers are attacked by remand prisoners at each facility.• Papakura - August 16 - Prisoner numbers peak at 43.Henderson Police report running out of prisoner meals. Againremand prisoners block the toilets with drink containers.One officer told Police News that frustration amongst remandprisoners had built to a stage where he described them “asprowling around like animals, looking to exploit the slightestweakness.”Police officers from around the country told similar stories toPolice News. In Whangarei, prisoners were three to a cell dueto overcrowding at Waikeria Prison. Police staff had to findextra mattresses for prisoners to sleep on the floor in somecases. In Dunedin, police reported that Dunedin Prison hadinsufficient beds available and so police holding cells wereoverflowing for the third time in 10 months.Further complicationsThe lack of suitable secure CYFS beds has complicated theproblem because police are now having to house youthoffenders who would normally be provided with a bed in aCYFS youth facility.In Rotorua, two teenage girls were forced to sleep on thefloor of a police interview room because the Child Youth andFamily Services (CYFS) did not have any beds available forthem. Two youths, who would normally have been in thecustody of CYFS, were also in police cells in Rotorua at thesame time.In Napier and Hastings, police were forced to hire temporarycivilian jailers who were signed in as temporary constables,because Hawke’s Bay Prison was at its capacity and police didnot have the staff available to provide 24-hour coverage of theprisoners. In mid-August five prisoners who should have beenheld at Mangaroa Prison, were being held at the Napier PoliceStation while six prisoners were in the Hastings Police holdingcells.Several prisoners from Arohata Women’s Prison and severalmale inmates from Rimutaka Prison, both near Wellington,were transferred to police cells in Upper Hutt due to prisonovercrowding last month. This was the first time in severalyears that Wellington’s main police cell holding facility hadbeen used in this manner.‘Not a Corrections problem’Police News understands that Corrections Department officials,while sympathetic to the plight of Police, don’t see it is astheir problem and are pointing to the 1987 Memorandum ofUnderstanding between Police and Corrections as backing theiropinion. Corrections is understood to hold the view that whenPolice prisoners are remanded into custody on a remand warrant(SP11) or sentenced warrant (SP10) the warrant is directed at‘every constable’ to deliver the offender to the Superintendentof a prison. If Police cannot deliver the prisoner because of anoverflow in prison numbers then the prisoner should remain inPolice custody until that can take place.This argument seems to belie the fact that it was Correctionsthat created the problem in the first instance, while it seeks todo a Pontius Pilate routine and wash its hands of the wholeaffair in the second.Contingency planning seems to revolve around placingthresholds on police holding cell capacities and thentransferring prisoners into District and High Court cells,where security guards, many of whom do not have suicidepreventiontraining, will supervise them.The Corrections Department has indicated that it expected tohave accommodation for 40 women prisoners in place by thetime this issue went to press. It is promising an additional 100beds for male prisoners by September “at the earliest”. It saysthese will be “phased in, depending on when the necessarywork can be completed”.Fifteen years ago, in the NZPA Newsletter I wrote a front pagearticle under the heading: “The Government plays pass theprisoner”. In writing this article, I have had a certain senseof déjà vu. Since 1989, the prison muster has continued tothrow the problem back at Police. The government is buildingmore prisons but they can’t come fast enough. So Police areagain left playing “pass the prisoner” - just like 15 years ago.In two months, the Memorandum of Understanding is up forrenegotiation between Police and Corrections. There will bemany police officers around the country taking plenty of interestin the outcome of that process, in the hope that 15 years downthe track they won’t be revisiting the dangerous Groundhog Daytypescenarios that have once again been foisted upon them inregard to holding remand prisoners in police cells.161