Wednesday, November 03, 2021

Downward trajectory of prison population continues

 The latest prison stats came out yesterday. The downward trend continues:


Looking at a broader view the pink area would now be at the horizontal axis:


Out of interest I have graphed individual prison musters at Sept 2017 compared to Sept 2021 and a couple stand out as having very large reductions:

I was volunteering up at Rimutaka during 2017 and it was pretty chocker, also housing overflow from Arohata. Their roll has since dropped from 1,067 to 623 - a 42% reduction. Waikeria has reduced by 45 percent. Arohata's population has reduced by a massive 64 pecent.

On the other hand Mt Eden has only shed 4%. But Mt Eden is primarily a remand prison. Which might say something about reduced offending not being a driver of shrinking musters.

The total NZ prison population has fallen from 10,470 to 8,034 - a 23 percent reduction.

Which made me wonder if the staffing levels are still the same?

The most recent data source is the Annual Report 2019/20 which says, "Our frontline team includes 4,103 corrections officers..." In 2016/17 there were approximately 3,800 corrections officers. Not a perfect match for the graph timeline but the trend in corrections officer numbers would appear slightly upward.

The vast majority of the staff I interacted with were good people.  I hope having a better officer- to- prisoner ratio is making their job a bit easier. 

1 comment:

Jim Rose said...

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that a big reason for a reduction in remand population, reduction of the thousand, was the police allowed prisoners to access their cell phones so they can look up a number, a cell number, to nominate a bail address for checking by the police for suitability as a bail address.