The 2009/10 budget contains significant funding to allow Corrections to manage increasing numbers of prisoners and community-based offenders.
An additional $431.7 million has been allocated over four years to help us manage the rising prison population. We currently manage 8,200 prisoners; this is projected to increase to 12,500 by 2018.
Of the total amount, $145.8 million will be used for implementation of increased double bunking (where two prisoners share one cell) at Northland Region Corrections Facility, Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility (ARWCF), Spring Hill Corrections Facility, Otago Corrections Facility and Mt Eden Prison. Double bunking in these five prisons will provide 1,000 extra prison beds.
$255.4 million will go to cover operational costs associated with the increased double bunking. This funding will be used to employ more frontline prison staff, and provide more programmes and other services such as food, bedding, clothing, healthcare and transport to prisoners.
Twenty-four million dollars has been made available for designing and planning a new prison in the upper North Island (possibly at Wiri, next to ARWCF), the extension of Mt Eden/Auckland Central Remand Prison (Stages 2 and 3) and new units at existing prisons.
An additional $267.7 million funding over four years has been allocated to Community Probation & Psychological Services (CPPS).
Of the total amount, $138.5 million is to manage the increased demand for the provision of pre-sentence advice and reports to judges and for the management of offenders serving sentences in community.
CPPS will be able to recruit more staff, including:
$78.3 million will be used to recruit additional staff to improve the quality of the management of offenders on parole and home detention.
$50.9 million will provide additional accommodation (such as larger offices for the increased numbers of staff), facilities, vehicles, IT equipment and improvements to the computerised offender management system.
We received $11.1 million so we can cope with a Ministry of Justice initiative to minimise court waiting times in Auckland.
We received $11.1 million over the next four years for three additional drug treatment units. These will be available by 2011 and will increase the number of prisoners we can treat from 500 to 1,040 every year.
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ISSN 1178-8453