The 22 February 2011, Mw6.2-6.3 Christchurch earthquake is the most costly earthquake to affect New Zealand, causing 181 fatalities and severely damaging thousands of residential and commercial buildings, and most of the city lifelines and infrastructure. This manuscript presents an overview of observed geotechnical aspects of this earthquake as well as some of the completed and on-going research investigations. A unique aspect, which is particularly emphasized, is the severity and spatial extent of liquefaction occurring in native soils. Overall, both the spatial extent and severity of liquefaction in the city was greater than in the preceding 4th September 2010 Darfield earthquake, including numerous areas that liquefied in both events. Liquefaction and lateral spreading, variable over both large and short spatial scales, affected commercial structures in the Central Business District (CBD) in a variety of ways including: total and differential settlements and tilting; punching settlements of structures with shallow foundations; differential movements of components of complex structures; and interaction of adjacent structures via common foundation soils. Liquefaction was most severe in residential areas located to the east of the CBD as a result of stronger ground shaking due to the proximity to the causative fault, a high water table approximately 1m from the surface, and soils with composition and states of high susceptibility and potential for liquefaction. Total and differential settlements, and lateral movements, due to liquefaction and lateral spreading is estimated to have severely compromised 15,000 residential structures, the majority of which otherwise sustained only minor to moderate damage directly due to inertial loading from ground shaking. Liquefaction also had a profound effect on lifelines and other infrastructure, particularly bridge structures, and underground services. Minor damage was also observed at flood stop banks to the north of the city, which were more severely impacted in the 4th September 2010 Darfield earthquake. Due to the large high-frequency ground motion in the Port hills numerous rock falls and landslides also occurred, resulting in several fatalities and rendering some residential areas uninhabitable.

Self-harm is a major international public health concern and is especially prevalent among prisoners. In this editorial, we explore recent trends in prisoner self-harm during the coronavirus lockdown, and consider strategies for improving the prevention and management of self-harm in prisons as we emerge from the pandemic.

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Prisons represent sites of singular healthcare need–characterized by high levels of distress and disorder. In many jurisdictions, practitioners are ethically charged with delivering healthcare that is “equivalent” to that available in the wider community. This claim has been much debated–yet the emergence of a global coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the arguments in a particularly stark manner. In the following conceptual analysis, we explore the emergent discourse of the coronavirus and consider its particular significance for prison healthcare decision making and the concept of equivalence. For example, both the coronavirus pandemic and practice of prison incarceration induce a sense of varied temporality: The discourse of prison is replete in this area–such as the concept of “hard time.” Alongside this, the discourse in relation to coronavirus has highlighted two competing modes of temporal understanding: The political–where the pandemic is conceptualized as has having a discrete “beginning and end”, and the scientific–where the “new normal” reflects the incorporation of the “novel” coronavirus into the wider ecology. The impact of these disparate understandings on the prison population is complex: “Locking down” prisoners–to safeguard the vulnerable against infection–is relatively simple, yet it has traumatic repercussions with respect to liberty and psychosocial health. Easing lockdown, by contrast, is a difficult endeavor and risks collision between the temporalities of prison–where “hard time” is accentuated by separation from the “real world”–the political and the scientific. Whither then the concept of equivalence in relation to a field that is definitively non-equivalent? How can practitioners and policy makers maintain a just ethical stance in relation to the allocation of resources when it comes to a politically marginalized yet manifestly vulnerable population? We argue that further debate and consideration are required in this field–and propose a framework for such discussion.