New Zealand to spend $4230 a day keeping Christchurch gunman locked up
Keeping the Christchurch mosque attacker in prison will cost New Zealand taxpayers A$6.1 million over the next four years.
In the Budget released on Thursday, cash was allocated to Corrections for the management of people of extreme risk .
The unit has only one inmate under its direct management â the man who murdered 51 people at two mosques on March 15, 2019. It was set up on July 1, 2019 and funding secured until June 2021.
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Masjid An Nur was one of two Christchurch mosques targeted during a terrorist attack.(John Kirk-Anderson / Stuff)
Budget documents show the money will ensure the unit and its associated support and leadership functions continue to effectively care for, and manage people of extreme risk.
Christchurch mosque shooter s imprisonment to cost up to $6 6m over four years stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Danny Bond collapsed and died while doing his mandatory fitness test last month. Corrections initially paused the tests for a review, but has now resumed them.
Photo: 123RF
Two separate reports by the Office of the Children s Commissioner into the Mothers with Babies Unit (MBU) in prisons have found multiple incidents where women were handcuffed before, during and after giving birth.
A 2019 report into the MBU in Auckland found female prisoners were handcuffed in labour or soon after birth in hospital.
A 2020 report into a Christchurch unit found handcuffing shortly after giving birth and while in the late stages of pregnancy.
It is illegal for female prisoners who are giving birth to be restrained, and Corrections policy states that where a medical professional says a woman is in labour, restraints must be removed.
These were not historical accounts of 19th century institutional cruelty, or tales involving some mad faraway sect. They were appalling, shaming depictions of childbirth from women under the care, or control anyway, of New Zealand’s Department of Corrections. Let the record show that these accounts, published by
Stuff on Sunday, conflict in vivid and explicit ways with the generalised assurances from the department about what its policy is. Let the record also show policies and practices have time and again proven to be markedly different things in our society, including our government departments where training is not always all it should be.