A high-risk violent offender who has been committing crimes since the age of 14, including manslaughter, is back behind bars with five new convictions. 

Harlem Rawiri Turi, 41, of Hastings, is currently in custody awaiting an April 27 sentencing date for demanding people's cars with menaces, breaching an electronically monitored curfew, and breaching an extended supervision order. 

The Department of Corrections was so worried about Turi's risk of reoffending when he was released from prison last year that it applied for the extended supervision order (ESO), usually granted to allow probation officers to keep tabs on high-risk sexual or violent offenders. 

It was the latest in a series of moves by the department to manage the risk posed by Turi, who at that time had 97 convictions, 27 of them for violent offences, and had been assessed as having an "intense drive, desire or urge" to use violence. 

Turi's criminal history was detailed at length when the Department of Corrections applied to the High Court, first for an interim supervision order in and then for the three-year ESO, which was granted by Justice David Gendall on December 16, 2021. 

Turi began offending with an aggravated robbery in 1994, when he would have been 14. His convictions since then include manslaughter, kidnapping, common assault, robbery with assault, assaulting police, assault with blunt instrument, injuring with intent, and assaulting females. 

On September 20, 2012, after drinking alcohol, Turi and co-offender Desmond Leaf, both wearing Mongrel Mob regalia, entered the house of small-time drug dealer Michael Mulholland in Lower Hutt. 

Turi, who had just been released from prison, assaulted Mulholland, fracturing his nose and eye socket and causing him to bleed profusely. Mulholland died from a heart attack a short time later. 

Turi was convicted of manslaughter at a trial but Leaf was acquitted. 

At the time of Mulholland's death, Turi was 31 years old and had already served 13 prison terms for violent offending. 

While in jail in 2014, Turi hit another prisoner with a broom, punched him repeatedly in the face and head and threw an object at him, resulting in a broken back and numerous facial fractures. He received a further one year and seven months in prison. 

At the time of his release in July last year, Turi was serving time for driving offences, resisting police and breaching his earlier release conditions. 

According to court documents, he soon started to reoffend, demanding a man's Ford car with menaces last October. 

He breached the ESO almost as soon as it was issued, failing to report to his probation officer on December 22. Five days later he breached an electronically-monitored overnight curfew, leaving his house at 10.10pm and not returning by the following morning. 

On Christmas Eve, he again tried to get the Ford car off the man he had menaced in October. He then demanded a woman's Subaru with intent to steal it on December 28. 

Turi pleaded guilty to five new offences – three of demanding cars, one of breaching the ESO and one of breaching community detention – in the Hastings District Court on March 22. He was remanded in custody by consent. 

The charges involving the cars carry a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. Breaching an extended supervision order is punishable by up to two years in jail. 

An assessment conducted by the Department of Corrections, quoted at length in the High Court papers, said Turi had displayed "established and persistent" volatile aggression. 

He has usually received jail terms for his offending since 1998, and seems undeterred by the prospect of going to prison. Before 2021, the longest time he had spent out of prison after being released was three months. 

The assessment said Turi's violence had been motivated by poor emotional regulation and the need to regain control when faced with a perceived threat or challenge. There was also evidence of "vengeful intent" and alcohol and drug use. 

"In the writer's opinion, Mr Turi was disinhibited by a lack of empathy, absence of guilt … and the belief that violence is acceptable in response to a threat or challenge," the assessment said. 

Turi completed a high-intensity treatment programme aimed at curbing his violent tendencies in 2003. Since then, he has been convicted of more than a dozen violent crimes, including Mulholland's death.