Dear Department of Corrections,

I wish to make a request under the Official Information Act.

In a response dated 18/10/2016 to my previous OIA request about ‘Change of serious assault data recording practices’ (C80334), the department noted that there is a tertiary category of the department’s incident component structure which may record ‘self-reported’ and ‘unverified’ incidents of sexual assault.

Please release to me the number of incidents in New Zealand Prisons between Jan-2010 and Oct-2016 that were recorded under this tertiary category as being ‘sexual assault’ or of a sexual nature. In providing these numbers, please indicate whether they were eventually determined to be a ‘Serious Assault’, ‘Non-Serious Assault’, or ‘Assault no injury’ by the department.

If this is not possible, or the department would consider that it would take too much work, please provide the information for the incidents for the most recent full year for which the information is available.

If this is not possible, or the department would consider that it would take too much work, please provide the information for the incidents between Jan-2010 and Oct-2016 which were eventually determined by the department to be ‘Serious Assault’. Your response to Alex Harris (ref C58464) indicates that this is both possible and within the scope of the Department’s capacity.

To be clear, I am requesting all the information of this nature, held by the Department, and not simply the information which the department has verified. I acknowledge that this information is not used for reporting purposes, and may not represent an accurate summary of the number of sexual assaults or incidents of a sexual nature which occur in New Zealand Prisons.

If possible, please break these numbers down by Prison.

Furthermore, please provide me with the Department’s policy on verifying and classifying incidents once they have been reported. For example, if the Department categorises all assaults of a sexual nature as ‘serious assaults’ but ‘does not break down these incidents into levels of seriousness’, how does the department verify that an assault is of a sexual nature so as to render a classification of ‘serious assault’ and not a classification of ‘non-serious’ or ‘no injury’?

Yours faithfully,

B E Goodsir