Prison Services

Prison Services manages New Zealand's 20 prisons.

The Service is responsible for ensuring all prisoners are accommodated securely, safely and humanely with minimum risk to public and staff safety.

In managing prisoners, Prison Services is responsible for ensuring a prisoner's basic needs are met, including providing appropriate health care, spiritual support, physical exercise and allowing them to maintain pro-social relationships with family and friends.

A major focus for Prison Services is ensuring sentence compliance by actively managing prisoners so that they:

• are positively motivated to comply with their sentences;
• complete their sentences; and
• experience appropriate consequences when they do not comply.

Prison Services employs around 4,000 staff across New Zealand, including around 3,200 Corrections Officers and 160 nurses.

The General Manager Prison Services is Harry Hawthorn.

In the 2008/09 financial year:

• Corrections managed 20 prisons capable of accommodating up to 9,131 sentenced and remand prisoners
• Of these 20 prisons, 17 are for men and three for women
• The prison population is approximately 8,500
• Māori comprised approximately 50 per cent of the prison population
• Women prisoners comprised six per cent of the prison population
• 42 per cent of prisoners were less than 30 years old
• The average annual cost of keeping an offender in prison was $90,977 per year.