A Dunedin woman who provided prominent jailhouse lawyer Arthur Taylor with a place to live when he was allowed out of prison is sad he is back behind bars and she is worried about his welfare.
Hazel Heal provided accommodation for Taylor for much of 2019 after he was released on parole in February that year.
"I’m saddened and disappointed and worried for him," Ms Heal said yesterday, after he had been recalled to prison on Friday, understood to be for allegedly breaching parole conditions.
"The system has failed him. I’m sorry it has come to this.
"I hope to be able to speak to him."
Taylor has more than 150 convictions for fraud, kidnapping, firearms-related crime and drug offences. He built a reputation as a "prison lawyer", fighting for prisoners’ rights while he was an inmate.
Before his stay in Dunedin, the high-profile prisoner was serving a jail term of 17½ years for a raft of offences and his sentence was to officially end in June 2022. He was granted parole last year at his 20th attempt but he was recalled to prison last week when the Department of Corrections deemed him an undue risk to the community.
Ms Heal said yesterday she had talked to Taylor in the past week but not since his arrest. He had been having trouble with his accommodation arrangements in Wellington, she said.
Ms Heal called for politicians to intervene to promote a resolution.
Taylor was barred from associating with a woman who lived at the Wellington address, so had to leave, but applied to the High Court last month to stay. The court rejected that but ruled Taylor should be allowed to retrieve belongings.
Ms Heal said being cut off from his possessions had made Taylor anxious.
"He needs to be settled and to have his belongings with him," she said.
His housing was "unsatisfactory" and money had been wasted on "keeping him homeless".
Taylor lived at her address for almost all of 2019.
"I would be happy to have him back. He and my partner got on very well."
He had shifted to Wellington to help clients in the North Island, she said.
Taylor escaped from the maximum security prison at Paremoremo, north of Auckland, in 1998 with three others, including double murderer Graeme Burton.
Ms Heal learned about Taylor as a law student and started corresponding with him about hepatitis C in prison from about 2017. She is an advocate on the issue.
She has previously spoken of him as a "legal genius".
