Policies on legal representation and prison misconduct hearings
Alastair JL made this Official Information request to Department of Corrections
The request was partially successful.
From: Alastair JL
Dear Department of Corrections,
I would like to make an Official Information Request regarding the presence of legal advisors at disciplinary hearings, as managed by the department of corrections (as described in section MC.02.04 of the prison operations manual).
In particular I would like to ask:
1) How many misconduct hearings were conducted within the New Zealand corrections department between January 1st 2020, and the end of December 2020? (If information is more easily collated for some other recent 12 month period, any 12 month time window in the past 3 years will do.)
2) If possible, in how many of these cases did the prisoner contact their legal advisor for the purposes of preparing their defence?
3) In how many of these cases did the prisoner apply to have a legal adviser represent them at the disciplinary or appeal hearing?
4) Of these requests, how many were granted, and subsequently led to representation during the hearing/appeal? How many were declined?
5) Does there exists some form of Timetable/calender determining when Visiting Justices will be available to administer hearings, and if so, how far in advance is such a timetable scheduled? If such policies vary from prison to prison, for the sake of concreteness, what policies apply in Christchurch Men's prison.
(Note: exact lengths of time are not necessary for this question, I am primarily interest in whether the schedule is planned months, weeks, days or hours in advance).
6) In what manner, are the times/dates and locations of hearings communicated to prisoners? When/how are they communicated to a prisoners legal representative?
Thank you for your time, and for any information you can provide.
Alastair Jamieson-Lane
From: Info@Corrections
Department of Corrections
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Kia ora,
Thank you for your email of 25 February 2021 requesting information
relating to policies on legal representation and prison misconduct
hearings.
Please be advised your request has been received, and will be considered
under the Official Information Act 1982.
Please note that our response letter to you (with your personal details
redacted), and any enclosed documents, may be published on Corrections’
website.
Ngâ mihi | Kind regards,
Ministerial Services
Department of Corrections, Ara Poutama Aotearoa
a: National Office, Freyberg Building, 20 Aitken Street, Wellington, 6011
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From: Info@Corrections
Department of Corrections
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Kia ora Alastair
Thank you for the below email, requesting information about custodial
disciplinary hearings. Your request has been considered under the Official
Information Act 1982 (OIA).
Corrections needs to extend the timeframe of our response to your request
by 20 working days, pursuant to section 15A(1)(b) of the OIA, as
consultations necessary to make a decision on the request are such that a
proper response to the request cannot reasonably be made within the
original time limit. Therefore, you can expect to receive a response to
your request by 27 April 2021. If you no longer require this information,
please let us know as soon as possible.
Please be advised that should you have any concerns regarding this
response you have the right to ask the Ombudsman to investigate our
decision to extend the timeframe. Contact details are: Office of the
Ombudsman, PO Box 10152, Wellington 6143.
Kind regards,
Brydie Raethel | Principal Ministerial Services Adviser |
National Office | Department of Corrections Ara Poutama Aotearoa |
Freyberg Building, 20 Aitken Street, Wellington | Private Bag 1206,
Wellington 6140 |
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From: Alastair JL
Dear Info@Corrections,
Thank you for this update on where things are at.
I appreciate your time, and the effort put into getting things right.
Yours sincerely,
Alastair JL
From: Info@Corrections
Department of Corrections
Kia ora,
Please see the attached in response to the below correspondence.
Kind regards,
Ministerial Services
Department of Corrections, Ara Poutama Aotearoa
a: Freyberg Building, 20 Aitken Street, Wellington, 6011
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From: Alastair JL
Dear Info@Corrections,
Thanks for this update with respect to time. I understand that the information requested is somewhat involved, and appreciate the time being spent. Thank you for doing this.
Yours sincerely,
Alastair JL
From: Info@Corrections
Department of Corrections
Kia ora,
Please see the attached in response to the below correspondence.
Kind regards,
Ministerial Services
Department of Corrections, Ara Poutama Aotearoa
a: Freyberg Building, 20 Aitken Street, Wellington, 6011
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From: Alastair JL
Dear Info@Corrections,
Thanks for putting all this together. Have an excellent day.
Yours sincerely,
Alastair JL
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- Download a zip file of all correspondence
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Alastair JL left an annotation ()
This request has been marked as "Partially fulfilled."
This was in part due to some of the information requested simply not existing (it isn't collected, or some of my questions unwittingly stepped into information help by prisoners, not corrections).
It is also marked as such because I asked questions such as "Does there exists some form of Timetable/calendar determining when
Visiting Justices will be available to administer hearings?"
And got the answer "yes. We send out the calender to X people on Y day.".
So... as a reminder to other Information requesters: asking if there is a calendar is not the same as asking if you can see it.
In all cases I consider the department to be acting in good faith, its just that asking questions in the wrong way will not always get you a fully comprehensive answer.
Link to this