Mark Mitchell: Corrections Minister on the prison population will increasing by 36 percent by 2035

The Corrections Minister believes our prisons will be ready for an increase in demand. 

The Ministry of Justice expects the prison population will increase 36% by 2035, to more than 14,000 people.

It's prompted concerns for the country's ability to cope with demand. 

Mark Mitchell says the Waikeria prison expansion will help provide enough beds. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It looks like we might need some more prison beds.

(00:02):
Let's start building, shall we? A report from the Ministry
of Justice predicting our prison population to go by thirty
six percent over the next ten years? Can we handle it? Corrections?
Minister Mark Mitchell with me this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Good morning, Hey, good morning Ryan.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
So will we have enough beds for our four fourteen
hundred and two hundred, fourteen thousand, two hundred prisoners by
twenty thirty four?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah? So yeah, The short answer is yes. The Department
has already opened eleven four hundred and seventy two operational
beds and which is around two thousand more than November
twenty twenty three, and by the end of the year
this is expected to exceed twelve thousand, twelve thousand as
we as we open up the new Waykria prison that

(00:39):
we went and opened cut the ribbon on last week.
In long term we'll see the Wykiri expansion, which we've
committed to and funded, and also the redevelopment of the
christ which prison means prison.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
What does the Waykarri expansion get us too?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
That's an additional eight hundred and ten, So then.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
We're at twelve thy eight hundred roughly, So we need another,
well more than a is that what christ Church gets us?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yes? So christ Church obviously delivers more, and then of
course we've got a they've also we're in the line
or it just the corrections are doing that stage outstanding
job and forward planning, so it also means that they've
got a arm. They're also preparing for aupan prism an
expansion here if we need it.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
What about stars? The staff's been a problem, and it's
even as recently as late last year at Rim attacka prison,
So how are we going to start at all?

Speaker 2 (01:33):
So we're doing extremely well on staffing. The attrition level
has dropped from around fifteen percent down to less than
eight percent. There's been a huge recruitment campaign that we
ran last year which saw one hundred and seventeen thousand applications,
and as of thirty first of May twenty twenty five,
we've had an additional nine hundred and twenty five full

(01:55):
time equivalent staff deployed. So we're doing extremely well with
our requit routing, our training and deployment of new Christians officers.
And so yeah, we're actually in a really good shape
a moment.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Your critics will say, oh, look, you designed people in
the slammer, and you're not actually solving the root calls
of why these people are offending in the first place.
It's the you know, these people that we will lock
away for longer will have kids, They'll have families. Those
families more likely once parents locked away, more likely to

(02:29):
be committing crimes in the future themselves. I mean, we're
creating a future disaster here.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
No. I think that we've been really clear that we
are focused on public safety, and under the previous government,
the only target they had around public safety was reduced
in the prison population by thirty percent, and we saw
a mess of increase in violent crime. So there are
some people that don't want to stick to the rules,
that think they're above above the law. They are often
residious violent offenders, and the safest place to put them

(02:58):
is into a correction system or facility, where then we
can start to work on rehabilitation and hope that they
rejoin society and make good decisions in their lives. There's
a huge human cost and economic cost to having these
people in the community, and we've been very clear as
the government that we're not going to tolerate that. The
flip side of it is is that we're doing a
lot of work around social investment to try and get

(03:19):
into people's lives earlier, for example, begins intergenerational and try
and stop them, try and reduce that pipeline of people
coming into the criminal justice system.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, we were chating about that. Yes, they hate lots
of texts coming in. Why are you because the cost
of a prison like one hundred and sixty K a
year or something, right, why are you giving them beds?
This is one person. Get the prisoners working on our
roading infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Look, there's lots of different programs inside corrections and one
of the things that I was really focused on when
I became minister is making sure that we're doing things
that actually give them real life skills so when they
come out they've got a much better chance of reintegrating
and making good decisions, because you know, we don't want
to have a mess population in our correction system as
a country. But the reality of it is that we've

(04:04):
been very clear that we're prioritizing public safety.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Okay, do you think they're the one the really bad
ones will be in there forever? Do you think they
should get heating in bed.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Look, there's there's some that there's some people that just
are always going to do bad things and it doesn't
matter what you do. I mean, at the end of
the day, Ryan, it comes down to personal responsibility and
personal choices. So we can line up the best rehabilitation
programs in the world until they actually want to engage
with it themselves, until they actually want to do the

(04:34):
hard work themselves, then you know we're going to continue
to need prisons.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Mark Mature, the Corrections Minister.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
For more from earlier edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
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