Guards shipped in to Mt Eden
Soaring remand numbers and a new high-security unit have stretched prison staff recruitment plans, writes Tony Wall.
Corrections has been forced to fly in guards from around the country to open a new unit at Mt Eden Prison in Auckland to deal with an ‘‘unprecedented’’ remand prisoner population.
Remand prisoners – those awaiting trial or sentence – have to be housed in high-security accommodation but it’s understood there are now more of them in the system than there are beds available.
The Corrections Association of NZ (Canz), the union for prison officers, told members there are 245 beds in a new building at Mt Eden, but ‘‘not enough staff to open those beds’’.
Neil Beales, the department’s Chief Custodial Officer, said the new unit at Mt Eden would be partially opened in the coming days by seconding staff from other prisons around the country.
The unit was finished last year but Beales said it was now being opened ‘‘sooner than planned’’.
One hundred beds would opened of the 245 available.
Canz president Alan Whitley said he understood Corrections had been having trouble recruiting enough staff to open the new Mt Eden unit, and it would have to operate with seconded officers for the next few months. ‘‘I think somebody has taken their eye off the ball.’’
Beales said for the past five years there had been a seasonal increase in the prison population starting at the end of December, then stabilising and reducing in March to April.
‘‘This year, there has been a significant and unprecedented increase in the number of be remand prisoners... particularly in the Auckland region.’’
The prison population as of Friday was 10,152 – 6189 of them sentenced prisoners and 3962 remand prisoners.
It’s understood Spring Hill prison in Waikato has been affected as the department juggles staff. Canz said in a memo to staff that a unit at Spring Hill had been closed to free up staff to be seconded to Mt Eden, and beds that had been temporarily closed in other parts of the prison since last year would be re-opened to house the prisoners.
This would have increased the muster in those units from 75 to 88, which alarmed Canz as they were low security.
The union wrote to the prison raising safety concerns and the proposal was dropped.
The seconding of staff to Auckland has also raised issues around travel and accommodation rates, which the union is negotiating.
The union memo also warned of the situation getting worse.
‘‘It is looking likely that the remand muster will continue to grow in the next couple of months and could go over 4000, so again we will have some challenging times ahead.’’
Beales said the seasonal increase in remand prisoners was partly due to the courts working at a reduced capacity over the Christmas-New Year period.
As well as seconding staff, Beales said, the department would do security classification assessments for newly sentenced prisoners at the ‘‘first opportunity’’ to ensure that they were not residing in high security accommodation if they didn’t need to be.
It was also increasing support staff at Mt Eden to help remand prisoners consider their bail options, among other initiatives.
Beales said there was ‘‘no capacity crisis’’. ‘‘We have sufficient total capacity across the prison network to manage this increase’’.
‘‘We will not compromise on staff or public safety. We continue to work closely with unions to ensure that all of the decisions we are making are operationally safe.’’
Beales said Corrections continued to recruit, with 74 corrections officers and offender employment instructors graduating in January.
Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis said the rising remand population was a major challenge and work was underway to address it. For example, the Government had allocated $54 million from the 2019 Budget to appoint an additional 10 district court judges, and a further two youth court judges.