Prison inmates must be transferred to Paremoremo, the country's only specialist maximum-security prison, within 48 hours after they have been reclassified as maximum security. Prison staffers and their union have disclosed in recent days that Air New Zealand is carrying some of these prisoners on scheduled passenger flights. They described this practice as dangerous. The prospect of travelling with violent prisoners is bound to bother the most phlegmatic of passengers and dismay more nervous ones. These people won't be readily mollified by Jeanette Burns, the Corrections Department's acting national commissioner, who said maximum-security prisoners have flown on rare occasions on scheduled domestic airline flights for decades. There has been no recent change in policy. An Air NZ spokeswoman would not comment on specific security issues, but said there had been no change to airline arrangements with the department.

The Corrections Association was not so reticent, accusing Corrections of putting public safety at risk with what it called "secret" flights. Association president Beven Hanlon said repeated inquiries among prison officers found no one who had been aware of the flights until late last year. In his 16 years as an officer and a decade as head of the union, he had never heard of a maximum security prisoner being put on a plane with the public. He was shocked.

Really? But he had commented publicly about a raft of recommendations in an Ombudsman's report on an inquiry into the transportation of prisoners in 2007. The report said transporting prisoners by air was common and both charter flights and scheduled public flights were used. The numbers of escort officers were increased for maximum security prisoners. The report found no systemic problems with prisoner transport by air and made no recommendations about them. "Few incidents occur during air transport, and we were given no reason to believe that any systemic problems exist," it said. Labour's Jacinda Ardern, now demanding answers to the union's claims, should first have taken time out to read the Ombudsman's report (tabled in Parliament under a Labour government). Kicking up a fuss would be in order only after she was sure that Corrections practices, indeed, are endangering public safety.