Exacerbating risks and diminishing rights for ‘at-risk’ prisoners
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
| Author | Alexis Harris,Elizabeth Stanley |
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895817739666 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895817739666
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2018, Vol. 18(5) 515 –532
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895817739666
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Exacerbating risks and
diminishing rights for
‘at-risk’ prisoners
Alexis Harris
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Elizabeth Stanley
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract
At-Risk Units (ARUs) are dedicated facilities established in New Zealand prisons to assist
those considered to be ‘at risk’ of self-harm or suicide. Their remit is ostensibly care-based and
rights-conscious, with authorities noting that ARUs preserve the ‘right to life’. Drawing upon
research within two correctional sites, alongside analysis of recent documents from oversight
bodies and courts, this article considers ARU operations. It is argued that, all too often, ARUs
have undermined humane practices towards suicidal or ‘at-risk’ prisoners. Four problems are
apparent: (1) ARUs are misused and overused in such a way that secure punishment, rather
than care, is prioritized; (2) within a context of ‘lesser eligibility’, ARUs operationalize degrading
conditions and treatments towards prisoners; (3) humane treatments are further diminished
by a correctional approach to prioritize legal or bureaucratic compliance; and (4) authorities
avoid institutional sanction for prisoner harms or deaths, particularly through an emphasis on
personal responsibilization or blame. The end-result is that ARUs are regularly operationalized
in ways that exacerbate risks and diminish rights for prisoners. A question remains about their
fundamental use as an appropriate response to those who suffer mental health distress within
penal environments.
Keywords
At-Risk Units, human rights, New Zealand, prisons, risk, self-harm, suicide
Corresponding author:
Elizabeth Stanley, Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington,
New Zealand.
Email: elizabeth.stanley@vuw.ac.nz
739666CRJ0010.1177/1748895817739666Criminology & Criminal JusticeHarris and Stanley
research-article2017
Article
516 Criminology & Criminal Justice 18(5)
Introduction
At-Risk Units (ARUs) are dedicated, purpose-built facilities established in New
Zealand prisons to provide safe spaces for individuals considered to be ‘at risk’ of self-
harm or suicide. In many jurisdictions, prisons have introduced ARUs, or similar ‘safe-
cell’ regimes, as a way to uphold human rights obligations, including preserving a
prisoner’s ‘right to life’. Their remit is ostensibly care-based and rights-conscious,
with authorities noting that many prisoners have been stopped from self-harming and
suicide, whether attempted or actual, as a result of interventions (Burrows et al., 2003;
Corcos and Lewin, 2001; WHO, 2007). However, in practice, these units often operate
almost identically to punitive or behaviour management regimes and can result in vul-
nerable prisoners being subject to periods of solitary confinement, sometimes for
lengthy periods of time (Shalev, 2017).
This article considers the establishment and operations of ARUs, with a particular
focus on New Zealand. Drawing upon recent research across two correctional sites, we
argue that ARUs, while wrapped in a language of rights, have served to diminish and
undermine humane practices towards suicidal or ‘at-risk’ prisoners. The article examines
four principal problems. First, penal institutions misuse ‘at-risk’ cells and prisoners sub-
sequently experience ARUs as a form of harmful punishment. Second, social discourses
of ‘lesser eligibility’ and offender dangerousness contribute to degrading conditions and
treatments within ARUs. Third, correctional bureaucracies have prioritized compliance
with legally driven rights, in a way that undermines the humane or care-oriented treat-
ment of prisoners. And, fourth, authorities place the ultimate responsibility for self-harm
and suicide onto individual prisoners, thus avoiding institutional blame for the condi-
tions and practices inherent in the correctional environment that contribute to prisoner
harms or deaths in the first place. In short, the practice of responding to those ‘at risk’ in
New Zealand prisons has often served to enhance rather than reduce risky treatment and
conditions.
In many ways, these harmful realities for ARU prisoners are consistent with the
broader heightened emphases on risk management in modern penal environments
(Feeley and Simon, 1992). Anglophone punishment systems have seen a shift to more
punitive and risk-averse approaches, and risk has become ‘a much more expansive cat-
egory’ (Pratt and Anderson, 2016: 529–530, emphasis in original). The remit of control-
ling ‘disordered’ or ‘dangerous’ individuals has heralded a range of ‘public protection’
measures including expansive surveillance measures, indefinite imprisonment, civil
detentions, the increased use of remand, tightening of parole and restrictions on move-
ments (Pratt and Anderson, 2016). Politicians and government agencies insist that any
displacement of human rights is entirely reasonable, and indeed necessary, given the
amorphous nature of offender risks that must be contained. In turn, alongside a shift to
managerialism (invoking financial efficiencies and performance indicators), prisons are
dominated by security concerns (Drake, 2012).
Against this background, ARUs are prison sites in which the notion of risk is particu-
larly fluid. Prisoners can be ‘at risk’ of suicide or from the harms posed by the main-
stream prison, however they are also cast as being particularly ‘risky’, creating risks to
themselves and to the institution. Thus, ARUs prioritize risk prevention over other logics
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