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The prison sentence that proved a death sentence

Sunday, 14 January 2024

Kodi Bennett died by suicide in Rolleston Prison in 2016, after being given access to the same item he used in a suicide attempt less than two weeks earlier.
Kodi Bennett died by suicide in Rolleston Prison in 2016, after being given access to the same item he used in a suicide attempt less than two weeks earlier.

When Kodi Bennett was sent to prison, his father Allan hoped it would help him. Instead it proved a death sentence. Nikki Macdonald reports.

Kodi Bennett seemed to have everything to live for.

The 25-year-old was soon to get out of his first stretch in prison. Unlike other inmates, who struggled to find work and a bed on release, he had a job lined up doing work he loved - fishing.

The boat owner was “in raptures” at the prospect of having his reliable worker back. Kodi might’ve been small and cocky, but he bested brawn when it came to hard yakka.

In the year he’d been in Christchurch Men’s Prison for theft and burglary, Kodi had been praised for his positivity and work in the piggery and gardens. Everything seemed on the up. Until it all came crashing down.

Kodi’s dad Allan Bennett accepts he’ll probably never know why Kodi tried to kill himself on April 3, 2016. But what happened next seems even more inexplicable.

Just eight days after his suicide attempt, Kodi was deemed no longer at risk and discharged from his “concrete floor and horse blanket” rehab room in the prison’s At-Risk Unit. He was transferred to Rolleston Prison, where his psychiatrist recommended close observation and vigilance.

The morning of his transfer he was placed on 30-minute observations. At 12.30pm, that was downgraded to 120-minute observations. At 2.30pm, the observation requirement was scrubbed altogether.

And when he arrived at Rolleston, Kodi was handed a reception pack containing the same personal care implement he’d used to try to take his life barely a week earlier.

“They gave him his weapon of choice again,” says Allan in disbelief.

Dark glasses shield his eyes from the evening sun at his Nelson property. If there are tears, you can’t see them. But his words catch with emotion - he’s sad, and angry, at all the ways the Department of Corrections failed his son. And at the life-stalling, seven-year wait for answers that’s left the 61-year-old feeling like he’s 80.

When Kodi was sent to prison in 2015, Allan felt a hint of relief. At least now he would be safe, and have breathing space to sort out his issues, he reasoned.

“I thought he'd be helped. It was the opposite, really.”

Trouble, with a grin

Born in Invercargill in 1990, Kodi moved to Nelson when he was a toddler.

He was a great little guy, Allan says. Trouble, but always with a grin.

Allan and Kodi’s mum Rochelle separated when he was about nine, and Rochelle died suddenly when Kodi was 17.

By then Kodi had left school and gone fishing. He was about 16 when Mark Muir and Gaye Bertacco gave him a job on their boat Latitude.

“I honestly thought he wouldn't make it because he was so tiny,” Muir says. “But once he got the hang of it, I used to say when we had other boys start on the boat - big fellas - ‘He can do it, why can't you?”

Kodi had his issues, mostly related to drinking while ashore. From 2008-2013 he amassed 15 convictions for drink-driving, burglary, theft and breaches of community sentences. But he got help from addiction services, and still turned up for work.

But in early 2015, when Muir and Bertacco were overseas, he went AWOL. Allan thinks he was running with a bad crowd, probably doing drugs. He later told police he was sleeping rough and stealing stuff just to survive.

When Kodi turned up to Allan’s place with arrest warrants hanging over him, Allan told him he couldn’t keep running. Then he called the police while Kodi waited.

“I was trying to help him,” Allan says. “He was going to get arrested anyway. I just thought, let's get it sorted.”

“Reckless”, “irresponsible”, “unacceptable”

In March 2015, Kodi was sentenced to two years and six months in prison on charges of theft and burglary.

Kodi was determined this would be his first and last lag. Prison reports praised his work ethic and positive attitude. He hoped to get out in June 2016. And Bertacco and Muir had promised him a job and bed on the boat.

But on April 3, 2016, Kodi tried to kill himself. It was impulsive, taking just 30 minutes from idea to action, and using what he had to hand - a personal care implement.

He was found bleeding, patched up in hospital, and sent to the prison’s At-Risk Unit (ARU) to recover.

No-one told his family about the suicide attempt. That made Allan feel “pretty bloody empty”. Had he known, he would have tried to visit. Kodi’s half-sister found out and did try, but was denied.

While Kodi told prison staff he was estranged from his family, his psychiatrist, Dr Simone McLeavey, said family contact might have proved a lifeline.

His psychiatrist, Dr Simone McLeavey, told the coroner’s inquest the ARU was “a really truly ghastly environment”, unsuited to recovery. After Kodi said he no longer felt suicidal, she signed off his release from the unit, but said he needed close observation and vigilance.

But his destination - Rolleston Prison - wasn’t set up for regular observations. Nurses checked on him when delivering medication four times daily. But on April 15 - the day Kodi died - a nurse gave him his lunchtime meds at breakfast.

Having left for the showers at 2.14pm, he wasn’t found dead until 5.01pm. He used the same method as his previous attempt.

Coroner Mary-Anne Borrowdale’s findings are peppered with strong words. She considered Kodi’s transfer to Rolleston “unacceptable”, with insufficient thought to how he would be kept safe.

While no-one could have predicted Kodi’s first suicide attempt, that was a red flag for greater risk in the following 12 months. Handing Kodi the very thing he used in his first suicide attempt was “reckless and irresponsible”, Borrowdale said.

“Kodi was armed with the means of self-destruction.”

She recommended Corrections review its access policy for the self-care item, which is already restricted for high security, remand and youth prisoners.

She also found Corrections failed in its legal duty to provide equivalent healthcare to that received in the community. And while she acknowledged even the best care might not have prevented Kodi taking his life, she concluded 'Corrections did not do all that could reasonably be expected of it to keep this vulnerable young prisoner safe from repeating the serious attempt that he had made on his life.”

The interminable wait for answers

By the time Borrowdale released her findings, in August 2023, Allan had been enduring flashbacks for seven years, waiting for answers.

“It’s bloody ridiculous. People shouldn't have to wait like this. It's your life as well. It ages everybody. It kills you.

“They couldn't give a toss… Every year I got angrier and angrier.”

A builder by trade, Allan says an incident on a construction site immediately stops work until the danger is managed. Waiting seven years to investigate means witnesses forget, and any recommendations are out of date.

In 2021, then chief coroner Deborah Marshall admitted the Coroner’s Court’s long delays were failing bereaved families.

While extra coroners were appointed, inquest schedules still feature cases up to seven years old.

Has anything changed?

Kodi’s death was one of 11 unnatural deaths in prison in 2015/16. There have been many more since, prompting the Office of the Inspectorate to investigate prison suicides and self-harm.

Allan believes Corrections should pay compensation for failing to keep Kodi safe.

Corrections has admitted its systems and processes let Kodi down. “For that we unreservedly apologise,” says Corrections director of mental health and addictions, Emma Gardner. Corrections plans to contact Kodi’s family to apologise in person.

In the seven years since Kodi’s death, Gardner says the department has made significant improvements, including changing its process for involving family in mental health care, implementing a Suicide Prevention and Post-vention Action Plan, introducing post-incident rapid reviews, improving discharge planning from at-risk units, and setting up Intervention and Support Practice Teams to help deal with vulnerable prisoners.

Corrections continues to work through Borrowdale’s recommendations, but has ruled out blanket restrictions on accessing the personal care item Kodi used to harm himself, Gardner says. Staff in at-risk units (now called ISUs) will consider restrictions case-by-case.

Corrections is adding TVs and furniture to ISUs and has secured funding to progress their refurbishment at Christchurch Men’s, Northland, Arohata, Mt Eden, Spring Hill and Whanganui Prisons. There is no timeframe for their completion.

It also plans a 96-bed mental health facility as part of the new Waikeria Prison.

Allan wants a recovery-friendly unit for prisoners who have self-harmed. And a coroner’s system that doesn’t leave families endlessly hanging. He’d also like prisoners to be given more basic dignity. Kodi’s name was repeatedly misspelt as Cody, to the point he requested his birth certificate to prove the correct spelling.

“I don't want it to happen to anyone else… Some of these guys deserve to be in there, some don't. Some have mucked up, and they go, ‘Geez that was silly, I want to get back out and forget about this’. That's a high percentage.

“You've got to help some of these people.”

Where to get help