Rehabilitation key to reducing prison population, says Little

Rehabilitation inside prison will be the “game-changer” to cut the prison population, says Justice Minister Andrew Little.

Speaking on Newshub Nation, Little said bail, parole and sentencing laws would all be looked at as the Government seeks ways to contain the ballooning prison muster.

“We will have to have a look at the Parole Act, the Bail Act. We’ll have to look at the sentencing council idea and get some cohesion around our sentencing,” he said.

“But I think the real gamechanger is going to be what we can do inside our prisons, and how make it systematic across the prison network, not just leave it up to individual prison managers who through managing their budgets and tweaking things here and tweaking things there, can do initiatives that have a good impact but a small impact.

“We need to be doing that stuff network-wide.”

Little was last week forced to put off a plan to repeal the controversial “three strikes” law after Government coalition partner NZ First said it wouldn’t support the move.

Little said there were other things that would have more impact on reducing the prison population than repealing the three strikes law.

“We’ve got to have a look at the whole range of things.”

The Government has promised to reduce the prison population by 30 per cent in 15 years, but with forecasts that it could reach 13,400 by 2027, Little said continuing with the status quo would require a new prison to be built every two to three years.

Last week Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis announced the rebuild of part of Waikeria prison which would give it an extra 194 beds.

He also said work had started on 976 short-term beds at other prisons nationwide.

Newshub Nation revealed the Government has been told that to avoid stress on the prisons system and potential failure, it needs to reduce the prison population, currently sitting at 10,500, by a specific figure by the end of 2019.

The figure was redacted from Official Information Act documents Newshub Nation had received.

Little would not pledge to release that figure publicly, saying he needed to look at why it had been redacted.