Human Rights and Prisons - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

the young women, they could ease tensions, and occasionally manage their
behaviour („mothering‟ attributes that might be addressed by staff). Yet, the
adult women also provided a role model that emphasised the centrality of
prison life as a future. Inevitably, this impacted negatively on the young
women.
Recently, there have been moves to review New Zealand‟s reservations to the
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in relation to age-mixing in
detention. This should be supported. Related to this are the issues of
prisoner transport and police cell detention. Following a fatal attack against a
young prisoner, Liam Ashley, it is now policy (from 28 August 2006) that no
prisoner aged 17 or under shall be transported in the same vehicle
compartments as adult prisoners. In addition, while there have been recent
improvements in this area, there remain concerns about the detention of
young people in police cells. Young people can be detained in police cells for
many days (Lynch, 2008; UN Committee against Torture, 2009). Police celldetention
raises a number of issues: young people can be in contact with
adult offenders, they cannot receive education, they have limited access to
sanitary facilities, they have limited access to nutritional food, and family visits
are very difficult to arrange.
Impact of Detention on Children
One element that drove New Zealand away from the extensive incarceration
of children/young people was the realisation that detention is not shown to be
effective in changing behaviours. Rather, at best, incarceration makes little
impact on recidivism rates for children and young people and, at worst, it can
increase offending (Lambie, 2009; Weatherburn et al, 2009).
Added to this, the experience of imprisonment is shown to have a deleterious
effect on the physical and mental well being of children/young people.
International literature shows that family relations become more strained
(particularly as children/young people are often detained far away from home);
negative behavioural traits can be reinforced; children/young people can be
exposed to bullying, intimidation or violence; their sense of alienation can be
compounded; they can face stigmatisation; they lose opportunities for
education; they do not have their specific needs met; and they are at risk of
institutionalisation (Goldson and Coles, 2005; HM Chief Inspector of Prisons,
2004). Children and young people are made more vulnerable by detention.
From this, it appears that New Zealand needs to continue to use detention as
the absolutely last resort for this group. In addition, more consideration might
be given to the establishment of small scale, dispersed Youth Rehabilitation
Centres to end the detention of children/young people in police cells and adult
prisons, and to intensively address serious youth offending.
Fortunately, research does show that strategies of early intervention and
„wrap around‟ services are more likely to bring positive benefits. Communitybased
sentences have more potential to reduce re-offending than custodial
sentences (McLaren, 2000:47; Solomon and Allen, 2009). Lambie (2009)
shows that international programmes such as multidimensional therapeutic
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