SERCO should now be issued with a final warning following new revelations a staff member at the Mt Eden Correctional Facility was caught on camera fighting with an inmate, said the Green Party today.
SERCO should now be issued with a final warning following new revelations a staff member at the Mt Eden Correctional Facility was caught on camera fighting with an inmate, said the Green Party today.
“A final warning will give the Crown a mechanism to easily terminate the contract, which is what they should be looking at doing,” said Green Party Co-leader James Shaw.
“SERCO should have been issued with a final warning before now and it is hard to contemplate a more compelling reason to issue them with a final warning than a guard fighting an inmate and SERCO failing to inform Corrections of this before now.
“Corrections should immediately issue SERCO with a final warning following these new fighting revelations.
“The Minister should tell the public why the fight wasn’t reported at the time and why a final warning hasn’t been issued before now.
“If the Minister doesn’t issue a final warning immediately, it just sends a message that that SERCO will, for the most part, be getting off scot-free despite numerous failings.
“SERCO has been issued with at least 10 performances notices in the last 3 years and has recently been fined $500,000 – it is astounding a final notice hasn’t been issued already.
“There has to be serious consequences for SERCO given these new revelations and a final warning is the most appropriate course of action.
“The mounting evidence makes it very clear that National’s prison privatisation experiment hasn’t worked and now they need to fix this mess,” said Mr Shaw.
