Where is the accountability?

John Armstrong calls it time up for Corrections:

Can it get any worse for Corrections? The punch-drunk department stumbles from one embarrassment to the next, this time being flayed alive by the Chief Ombudsman to such a degree he was worried his report would be construed as criticism for criticism’s sake.

The word “unsatisfactory” peppers just about every page of his report on Corrections treatment of prisoners when transporting them from jail to court or from jail to jail. And when things are not unsatisfactory, they tend to be “highly unsatisfactory”, “undesirable” or “unacceptable”.

If it was not obvious already, John Belgrave’s 116-page report confirms the department is – to use National’s one-word description – dysfunctional.

It simply has not been performing to the standards expected of a government department. Not that you would know, judging from the silence of the State Services Commission, the supposed state sector watchdog.

The full report from the Ombudsmen is here.

Claire Trevett highlights that the Corrections Department were found to have misled the Ombudsmen, yet amazingly no-one has lost their job.

The Minister, Damien O’Connor, has said “it had previously been difficult to isolate who was accountable on the issue.”

Indeed. I have a fairly good idea of who should be accountable, as I suspect do most people.