New Zealand to review laws after second letter sent from jail by Christchurch mosque attacker Brenton Tarrant emerges
- The Corrections Department said another letter by Tarrant containing objectionable content was among a few not caught by mail vetting staff
- He would now be blocked from sending or receiving mail pending a review, said the chief of Corrections
Corrections said a second letter by mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant containing objectionable content was not caught by mail vetting staff, while a third by Philip Arps – a white supremacist jailed for sharing the mosque shooting video online – also contained messages that should have been withheld, the New Zealand Herald reported.
Both men are held in different prisons, with Tarrant at a maximum-security cell in Auckland, and Arps jailed at Christchurch Men’s Prison.
Christine Stevenson, chief executive of Corrections, said the letter by Arps, addressed to a local news organisation, should not have left prison.
“This is totally unacceptable, it should not have happened, and I apologise for any further distress this has caused,” she said of the second failing by the department.
Stevenson said she did not have confidence in current processes for reviewing and assessing prisoners’ mail, and had called for an immediate review, the Herald reported.
“The mail of prisoners who have been identified with extremist ideologies and/or registered victims will be immediately centralised pending a full review carried out by an external party (to be determined),” she said.
