Prisoners misbehaving before flight forced to turn around
Photo:
Five of the eight women on a special charter flight for prisoners that was
forced to turn around
after an interior window was damaged were misbehaving before leaving prison grounds.
The eight women were flying from Auckland to Wellington on 12 February when one of them damaged the window.
RNZ has obtained a heavily redacted Department of Corrections report into the day, which reveals bad behaviour from some of the women began at the Auckland Region Women's Corrections Facility.
It said five of the women turned up at the meeting point together, displaying "resistance and pushback regarding hand cuffing and property".
"Active resistance continued while transporting the wahine into the vehicles to go to the airport - nothing major."
Some prisoners kept resisting even when being walked on to the flight.
On the flight, one prisoner broke the window at 10.15am, when the plane was about 5000 feet in the air.
After the crew was told, the pilot decided to turn around and land at Auckland Airport.
"The broken inner windowpane did not let air into the plane itself. The charter flight had about eight prisoners and [redacted] onboard," the report said.
Another prisoner kicked and damaged a chair armrest onboard.
No staff were injured in the mid-flight melee. The prisoner who broke the window suffered a cut finger.
The prison sent extra staff to the airport to help with the plane's landing, where there was more trouble.
In a heavily redacted section the report said one prisoner verbally abused a prison officer, while one person's hair was pulled, but it wasn't clear who the victim was.
The report said internal prison misconduct charges would be laid.
Among the "learnings and considerations" identified from a debrief was that prison staff did an excellent job at calming the prisoners.
Corrections commissioner for custodial services Leigh Marsh said there had been no further such incidents since February.
"Safety is our number one priority and we have a robust system in place to ensure prisoners can be safely transported between prisons, courts, specialist medical facilities and rehabilitation providers.
"We carry out tens of thousands of these prisoner escorts each year without incident. Staff conduct a thorough risk assessment for all prisoner escorts and security measures are put in place to mitigate any safety risks."
Prisoner behaviour on the charter flight was unacceptable and staff acted appropriately to de-escalate the situation, Marsh said.
"A full review into the incident is currently under way and this will inform whether any of our processes can be further strengthened."
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