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One of the reasons prisoners are receiving food through the food slot is due to overcrowding and under-staffing.
Under-staffing is managed by locking prisoners down for long periods of time while there are roster shortages, for example during holiday periods.
Having 2 prisoners per cell that was designed for 1 and then inflicting long lock-downs on them results in high levels of anxiety.
After 2 weeks of such lock-downs I experienced in Springhill, prisoners began to display a type of psychosis that you would typically call 'going mad'.
Food trays would be booted through the food slot, doors would be kicked en mass, screaming, yelling uncontrollably, howling throughout the night.
Add to that the increase in internal cell violence as prisoners just get sick to death of seeing each others faces. Best of mates even are at each others throats after that long of being locked in cells for 20-23 hours a day.
These incidences then go on every prisoners record, and go against them at parole hearings resulting in much longer times in prison.
They never used gas in Springhill to manage the madness that ensues during xmas holidays or other staff shortages, but rather they used a variation on the 'goon squad', and mass punishment for the actions of a few.
So I get Professor Tracey McIntosh's concerns for prison guards, its not their fault that prisons are massively overcrowded, and they are also cronically understaffed. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/431299/gassed-in-their-cells-begging-for-food-at-auckland-women-s-prison
But why is it that we have to hear these stories from prisoners or ex prisoners like myself. Prison guards who face this every holidays, and especially every XMAS - January holidays, need to come forward and speak out.
The reason they don't do this of course is because they will be fired, and probably for many of them, lose their residency here, their pathway to citizenship. Even if they did, Corrections would counter as they have done in the past with absolute horseshit propaganda.
Example of this was the Springhill riots of 2013. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/08/video-a-look-inside-chaotic-spring-hill-prison-riot.html Corrections propaganda machine kicked into gear, it was about rival gangs, booze, hooliganism.
Prisoners had been planning that riot when I was in prison. The kaupapa was over crowding, long lockdowns to managed it, everything I have just spoken about.
Their weakness in their plan was that they had no ability to get their message through to the media, and I told them so when this was being discussed.
Following my release I worked with some Howard league people to compile a report on conditions in Springhill. This and other reports likely became the basis of some surprise visits by the Ombudsman to Springhill and caught Corrections out
Up until that point they had complete control over the narrative, it was about gangs, and drugs.
Make no mistake about it, ignore what the head of Corrections spouts, Corrections know that Judith Collins call to double bunk cells made for one prisoner was the wrong call, and the massive rise in in-prison violence among prisoners and guards, is the result of this.
Its torture, is what it is.
