brookingblog

In 1971 an experiment was conducted at Stanford University in which twenty-four male students were selected to take on randomly assigned roles as prisoners or guards in a mock prison situation.   It was conducted by Dr Philip Zimbardo and became known as the Stanford Experiment. Zimbardo told the ‘guards’: “You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, and a [...]

Debra Kaye has a young son in prison at OCF. On April 17, she wrote on BrookingBlog: “Currently in Otago Correctional Facility there are five men that have been locked up for twenty three hours a day in their punishment cells. They have been put into the management (punishment) wing for over three months and [...]

Kim Dotcom recently spent a month on remand in Mt Eden prison after the Solicitor General bowed to pressure to have him extradited to the United States.   The police took away his cars and froze his bank accounts.  In prison, Corrections took away his blankets and deprived him of sleep – they woke him up [...]

Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom recently spent a month in the Auckland Central Remand prison (ACRP) after the US government persuaded New Zealand police that his file sharing company, Megaupload, was infringing US copyright laws.   ACRP is run by Serco, an international conglomerate which runs prisons in a number of countries including New Zealand.  In Britain, [...]

ADHD stands for attention hyperactivity disorder. Kids who’ve got it are either inattentive, hyperactive, impulsive or sometimes all three – and it affects between 3% and 5% of school age kids. As at July 2009, there were 760,859 children attending school in NZ which means somewhere between 23,000 and 38,000 children have the disorder. According [...]

In 1997, William Bell was sent to prison for five years nine months after he attacked and almost killed an attendant at a petrol station.  At the time of this assault, he already had 102 convictions for a raft of offences including theft, fraud, burglary, aggravated robbery, assault, trespass, and possession of drugs.   He was [...]

On January 7, the New Zealand Herald reported the story of James Whenuaroa – sentenced to prison for six weeks for stealing a bottle of orange juice from a supermarket. He told the judge he took it because he was hot and thirsty. Perhaps the most pertinent part of the story was that Mr Whenuaroa [...]

Graeme Burton has murdered two people. In 1992 he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Paul Anderson who was working as a lighting technician in a nightclub. Burton had been drinking and was found to be under the influence of six different drugs at the time.  He was released on parole [...]

The Waikato Times reports that a Hamilton woman died in prison of a heart condition after her calls for help were ignored by guards. An inquest into the death of Anna Selina Kingi, 41, at the Auckland Coroner’s Court yesterday heard that Ms Kingi was found dead in her cell at Auckland Regional Woman’s Facility [...]

A story in the Taranaki Daily News reports that 33 year old sickness beneficiary Steven Bunyan, has just been sent to prison for the 38th time. He was jailed for assaulting a family member (apparently his mother), contravening protection orders, breaching court release conditions and repeat drink-driving. He was jailed for 10 months and disqualified from [...]

Mr Findlay (not his real name) was referred for an alcohol and drug assessment by the Parole Board in March 2009. At the time of the assessment, he was 39 years old and had been in prison for a total of 20 years. He was serving a life sentence for stabbing a young man to [...]

In September, the Dominion Post reported the sad case of Mr Craig Andrew Blair who robbed a bank in Rotorua - not for financial gain but so that he would be sent back to prison. He went into the bank, approached the teller with a note demanding money and said he had a gun in his bag. [...]

This is a sad story. It’s about a man with an obsession – an obsession which is so out of control, it’s killing him. That man is Justin Rys, New Zealand’s most successful body builder. He has won a number of titles in his short life including Mr New Zealand, Mr Australasia and Mr Oceania. [...]