Dear B E Goodsir,

 

Thank you for your email of 20 October 2016, requesting information
relating to incidences of sexual assault.

 

Your request will be considered under the Official Information Act 1982.

 

Kind regards,

 

 

Ministerial Services

Department of Corrections Ara Poutama Aotearoa

Mayfair House | 44-52 The Terrace | Private Box 1206 | Wellington

 

Reducing re-offending by 25%

-----Original Message-----
From: B E Goodsir [mailto:[FOI #4803 email]]
Sent: 20 October 2016 9:59 a.m.
To: Info@Corrections
Subject: Official Information request - Self-reported incidences of sexual
assault in prisons

 

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

 

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Good afternoon

 

 

Please see attached correspondence from the Department of Corrections.

 

Kind regards

 

 

Ministerial Services

Department of Corrections Ara Poutama Aotearoa

Mayfair House | 44-52 The Terrace | Private Box 1206 | Wellington

 

Reducing re-offending by 25%

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The
information in this message is the property of the New Zealand Department
of Corrections. It is intended only for the person or entity to which it
is addressed and may contain confidential or privileged material. Any
review, storage, copying, editing, summarising, transmission,
retransmission, dissemination or other use of, by any means, in whole or
part, or taking any action in reliance upon, this information by persons
or entities other than intended recipient are prohibited. If you received
this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all
computers.