People Against Prisons Aotearoa

Daily Torment

A personal account of one woman’s experience of incarceration in Aotearoa.

I was arrested on the 15^th of October, 2007 in the so-called “anti-terror raids.” By 6pm that evening, I was incarcerated in Arohata Prison just north of Wellington. At the time, our situation was somewhat unusual: generally, even for serious crimes, people would be bailed (often with quite strict conditions) until trial. The state said we were terrorists and the court agreed it was too dangerous to let us out.

Today, however, changes to bail laws mean that it is much harder for people who have been arrested for a crime to get bail pending their hearing. The implications for this are significant, because people who are in jail have much less access to justice: it’s hard to talk to a lawyer, to talk with witnesses, to get documents together or simply organise your life for a long court proceeding. Once in prison, it is much harder to get out.  

Earlier on that day, my friend Emily and I had been stripped of our own clothing and given blue boilersuits. We were placed in the general holding cells downstairs in the Wellington District Court, a quite old fashioned set up with steel barred cells adjacent to each other, and with a toilet in each nominally covered by a waist-high wall.

We were taken to the prison and subjected to a full body strip search. A screw (corrections officer) watched me undress, then made me squat to my ankles to ensure that anything concealed in my anus or vagina fell out. This was just the beginning of day-to-day searches, day-to-day degradations.

We were initially placed in segregation (solitary confinement) “for our own good” where we had no contact and were only allowed out of our cells for 1 hour per day. On October 16^th, I got to make my first phone call. I was in shock and despair and could hardly form words. Also done for my “own good” was a 15-minute check-up throughout the night: a screw would come shine a light in my face to wake me up.

We demanded to be moved to general population and, when we arrived, we were searched. Then, we were warmly greeted by the other prisoners who had all heard about the case on TV. At the time, all of the women in the Tizard Wing (Remand) were Māori save for one other Pākehā.

The routine was mind numbing, isolating and degrading: we were searched whenever we went anywhere. We were taken to the gym for a sad game of volleyball every morning and required to play with a flat ball. We were searched before we left the wing; we were searched when we returned.

We were searched when we went to get clothes from the prison repository. We were searched when we got back.

Our rooms were searched. We were let out into the yard for an hour in the afternoon; we were searched.

By the end of the second week, we finally got some visitors. We were searched leaving our wing. When we arrived at the visitor area, we were searched and put into orange jumpsuits (so they know who the prisoners were) with zip ties on the wrists and ankles (so we couldn’t stuff anything up them). I thought those jumpsuits only existed at Guantanamo Bay; how little did I know that they are standard prison gear in New Zealand. We were searched again when our visitors left. We would be searched again when we returned to our wing from the visiting area.

When we went to court, we were searched. Our legal documents would be read by screws before we were locked into tiny transport cages.

One day, a guard came to my cell and said, “Pack your stuff.” Everyone else had just gone to volleyball. I had no idea where I was going, but I was expecting some visitors that day so I guessed that I was being transferred to another wing. I was worried I would be separated from Emily.

We were driven to the airport and put into shackles: we were locked into a cell at Wellington Airport. We were subsequently dragged around the airport by a chain.

Eventually, we arrived at the Auckland Women’s prison at Wiri. Of course, we were searched again. The new prison has cameras in every cell so the guards can watch you all of the time. Ostensibly the camera doesn’t film the shower or toilet area but I felt exposed and vulnerable, watched in bed or at the desk all day, every day. The person in the cell next to me had an amazing voice; she was 17. They didn’t know what else to do with her so they put her in an adult prison.

Each day, we went outside for an hour. We all got searched. When we returned to the wing we got searched.

We had regular visitors by the time we got to Auckland. The bureaucratic process for getting visitors takes ages, and I was thrilled to see my mum and friends.

Within a few days of arrival, my lawyer told me that the police were trying to bring charges against 13 of us under the Terrorism Suppression Act. If they succeeded in bringing the charge (which required the consent of the solicitor-general), he said we would never get out.

After that, I remember sitting in the common area of our wing, looking out the window and starting to cry. When the other women saw me, they immediately said, “Don’t cry.” They said that it would be worse for me if I cried. The screws would send me back to segregation to “help” me.

It was horror. I thought I would be there for 14 years.

The thing about prison that most people don’t understand is that it is an institution that teaches violence. The powerful in our society say, “we want to create a safe, secure community” so people should obey some guidelines about how to behave. But the reality is that the state operates by violence and coercion. Most of that violence and coercion is the small, day-to-day degradations of strip searches or night time patrols, with guards waking you up to “make sure you’re alive”, or having to beg to use the phone or get medical treatment or just get a tiny bit more food. One day I counted I was searched seven times.

There are far more violent activities, of course, such as sexual assaults and rapes. There were stories of a prisoner who was pregnant to a guard when I was there. Prison teaches the lesson that the powerful have the right to use violence and force to get what they want, and to get you to do what they want.

I was really lucky. I got out after a month. There was a whole lot of community support and solidarity that mobilised around the case. But I will never forget what the dread of that locked door felt like, and the utter sense of powerlessness I felt at the hands of people who clearly took pleasure in making supplicant beggars of us all. 

Written by Valerie Morse