In 2012, the Department of Corrections managed and operated 19 prisons within four regions of New Zealand.

Where are our prisons?

Table 1 lists the prisons and their capacities. In 2012, there was capacity for 10,160 prisoners in New Zealand.

Table 1

In December 2012, Wellington Prison closed, and in April 2013, New Plymouth Prison closed. The government agreed to plans for a new men’s prison, situated at Wiri in Manukau, Auckland, in September 2012. When construction is completed, this facility will hold around 960 prisoners.

Who’s in our prisons?

New Zealand’s prison population has been rising over time. At 30 June 2012, there were 8,618 prisoners (8,091 males and 527 females). Of this population, 6,764 were prisoners serving a sentence, and 1,854 were remanded in custody.

A decade earlier, at 30 June 2002, there were 6,048 prisoners (5,773 males and 275 females); 4,983 were serving a sentence, and 1,065 were remanded in custody.

Ethnicity

Table 2 shows that at 30 June 2012, Māori made up 51 percent (4,391) of the total prison population. European prisoners made up 33 percent (2,835), and Pacific peoples accounted for 12 percent (1,006) of the total.

The ethnic proportions differ between the sexes. In 2012, 58 percent of female prisoners were Māori, while 51 percent of males identified as Māori. In contrast, 12 percent of all male prisoners were Pacific peoples, while just 5 percent of women in prison were this ethnicity. The percentages for prisoners of identifying as European were very similar (31 percent of females and 33 percent of males).

Table 2

Age

Table 3 shows 41 percent of prisoners were aged under 30 years as at 30 June 2012. However, by age group, the highest proportion of prisoners was aged 40–49 years (21 percent). Thirteen percent of prisoners were 50 years or older.

Table 3

Most-common offences

The six most-common offences for which offenders are imprisoned are shown in table 4. Overall, 83 percent of offenders were in prison for these six offences.

At 30 June 2012, for 21 percent of prisoners, the most serious offence they were imprisoned for was sexual assault and related offences. However, this varied considerably across the age groups. For example, 9 percent of those under 20 years were imprisoned for sexual or related offences while 50 percent of prisoners over 50 years were imprisoned for the same offences.

The second most-common offence for prisoners was acts intended to cause injury (18 percent of all offences), which showed the opposite pattern – 24 percent was the highest proportion (20–24 years), while the smallest was 6 percent (50 years and over).

Table 4

Source: Department of Corrections and Statistics New Zealand