Northland Region Corrections Facility

There are eighteen adult correctional facilities (prisons) in New Zealand. Three prisons house female offenders, one each in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The remaining fifteen house male offenders; ten in the North Island and five in the South Island. In addition, there are four youth correctional facilities, termed youth justice residences. The facilities are managed by the Department of Corrections.

There are five security levels in New Zealand adult prisons: Minimum, Low, Low-Medium, High and Maximum.

Northland Region Corrections Facility is located 5 km northeast of the town of Kaikohe and is colloquially known as Ngawha - after the local area. Maori in Northland tried to persuade the Corrections Department not to upset a local taniwha by building the prison on thermal land. They were unsuccessful and the facility opened in 2005. Following completion, the foundations proved to be unstable. In 2007, the Government admitted the prison was sinking into the ground and required repairs. It ended up costing $137 million, which was $100 million more than the original project estimate.

The prison accommodates up to 548 prisoners with security classifications ranging from minimum to high-medium and employs 180 staff.

Auckland Prison is located on Paremoremo Rd on Auckland's North Shore - hence the name Paremoremo Prison. It contains New Zealand's only specialist maximum-security prison unit and houses some of the most violent criminals in the country. The prison opened in 1968 and contains up to 681 prisoners though in 2010, only about 90 were classified as maximum security. It has a staff of 225. The first female corrections officers started working at the prison in 1987 and women now make up 14% of staff.

Paremoremo has a 60-bed treatment unit for child sex offenders called Te Piriti and a Special Needs Unit. In November 2011, a new Drug Treatment Unit (DTU) was established at the prison with clinical staff coming from Odyssey House. The DTU houses up to 48 prisoners at a time and provides an intensive 12-week programme targeted at prisoners serving sentences of between four and twelve months.

History

There has been a prison on the Mount Eden site in Auckland since 1856. The first building was made of timber and was known as the Stockade. A new stone building opened in 1865 although the stone wall that surrounds the prison was not finished until the mid-1870s - using prison labour. The Victorian stone building with its high towers and thick stone perimeter wall is still a recognisable Auckland landmark.

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