The NZ Prison Industrial Complex is falling in upon itself
Budget 2025 provided $98.4 million a year in operational funding – mostly to hire more frontline staff – to cover a forecast 10,860 prisoners by June next year.
By the end of June this year, there were already 10,783 prisoners, approaching the all-time high and almost at the peak of the funded capacity – a year earlier than anticipated.
This has left Corrections describing the frontline staffing level as “sub-optimal”.
Treasury officials, in a briefing in March, warned about stretching the funding any further: “It is likely that any further significant scaling would require changes to service delivery, including rehabilitation, reintegration and health services.“
In an update after Budget 2025, Corrections said the prison population at the end of June was above the level funded for in Budget 2024 (10,783 versus 10,000 prisoners).
A rising prison population is not unexpected, given the Government’s law and order programme that will send more people to jail for longer. Coalition policies – including sentencing reforms, new laws targeting gangs, and Three Strikes 2.0 – are estimated to add 3000 prisoners to the total population in the next 10 years.
The completion of a 596-bed addition to Waikeria Prison in Waikato has ensured enough capacity for the short-term, leaving a buffer of about 1300 beds out of a total 12,145-bed capacity.
This has its own complexities, however, with an increasing proportion of prisoners being double-bunked: 45% in June this year, up from 40% in June 2024, 34% in June 2023, and 27% in June 2022.
Double bunked violent, overcrowded prisons make rehabilitation far less likely creating nothing but a time bomb of men released more broken and damaged than when they went in.
If safety for the community and justice for victims is to mean anything, it requires a prison system that rehabilitates rather than punishes via suffering.
The loss of liberty is the punishment, making prisoners suffer beyond that is just a. revenge fantasy masquerading as social policy.
Look, I’m open to the argument of keeping prisoners in prison longer if that makes you feel safer, but surely the environment we keep them in for longer demands more serious consideration than simply wanting to see them suffer.
All the current system does is release men back into the community who are more damaged than rehabilitated.
That’s not a solution.
It’s a recipe for more serious crime committed on release, more corrupt prisons and more prison riots.
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Government policy of encouraging more crime to be the realm of prison gangs based on ties formed in prison rather than patched outfits with wider community ties should definitely decrease violence in society, right?
13000 more highly trained criminals to be released onto the streets with no rehab or training being given while locked up .Then they are thrown out with no where to live or work and no cash for accomadation or food .Locked up as punishment then released to nothing as a further punishment .
So was there a different plan under Labour .Both sides of the spectrum find rehab hard to factor in .Do you take from the good to help the bad be better .There is a limited pot of money to go around .
My fix is improve education as so many criminals are unable to read and write which puts them at a disadvantage.
There already prisoners that have been there way pass their use by date some aren’t even a threat anymore because of their age some of them just don’t have support so disqualifies them from release
Providing education for prisoners on remand, yet they haven’t been convicted yet now I thought it was innocent until proven guilty but also delayed justice is not very fair justice now is it. Also, eventually many of those locked up have to get out and that is when the shit hits the fan as there will always be consequences for punitive policies.
Providing education for prisoners on remand, yet they haven’t been convicted yet now I thought it was innocent until proven guilty but also delayed justice is not very fair justice now is it. Also, eventually many of those locked up have to get out and that is when the shit hits the fan as there will always be consequences for punitive policies.
A person involved with prisoner rehabilitation told me that the government wants to increase the prison population to justify the expense of building a new prison.