A report into New Zealand’s criminal justice system published by a coalition of justice and human rights organisations on Monday revealed multiple accounts of abuse, discrimination and alleged human rights violations perpetrated by police and corrections staff between June 2022 and March 2024.
Analysing 62 complaints received by Aotearoa Justice Watch (AJW), the report alleged that both law enforcement and prison personnel engaged in abuses of power over the period of inquiry, including excessive and reckless use of force and the maintenance of dysfunctional internal complaints systems.
The report describes allegations of the police conducting warrantless searches, coercive statement collections and administrative errors resulting in wrongful arrest. One complainant alleged that the police engaged in behaviour amounting to harassment of peaceful protesters.
A raft of claims relating to mistreatment while in prison were presented, involving lack of access to adequate medical treatment and the imposition of solitary confinement. Specific practices such as strip and rubdown searches were identified as especially harmful, given the instances of sexual harm incarcerated people reported during these procedures.
Further, the report concluded that the complainants’ testimonies indicate that New Zealand’s founding constitutional document te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi—and specifically the guarantee to Māori in Article 2 of tino rangatiratanga (ultimate power and authority power) over their lands, their villages and treasured possessions—was not being upheld by the Crown.
AJW was established in 2022 to create a platform through which complainants could anonymously share their experiences with the New Zealand police and prison systems. The group comprises independent not-for-profits including Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand, People Against Prisons Aotearoa, JustSpeak and the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties. Despite the lack of independent verification of the complaints, AJW maintains that its conclusions are consistent with similar investigations conducted by the Ombudsman and Office of the Inspectorate.
In 2023, the UN published its seventh periodic report on New Zealand’s implementation of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The committee was concerned with, among other things, the lack of information on efforts taken to ensure fundamental legal safeguards were delivered, such as access to legal representation, recommending these be guaranteed in law and practice.
AJW’s findings come only weeks after the public release of a historic inquiry into the abuse of children, young people and adults in New Zealand state and faith-based care institutions, which revealed that an estimated 200,000 victims were abused between 1950 and 2019 while in care. Significantly, the Whanaketia report acknowledged for the first time that there are reasonable grounds to believe that torture occurred in care institutions and noted the existence of a pipeline from care institutions to prison.
