Opening Auckland Women's Corrections Facility

As Prime Minister I am asked to open many new services and facilities, particularly in the education and health sectors and for businesses which are expanding. This, however, is the first time I have ever opened a new prison.

There are of course mixed feelings around opening a new corrections facility. This is not exactly a place to welcome people to. Nonetheless it is a facility which is badly needed, both for law enforcement and for rehabilitation. Today’s opening is also an opportunity for us to acknowledge the very hard work of all the staff of the prison service, who carry out essential public service on behalf of the community.

Today marks both an end and a beginning. It’s the end of the construction phase for Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility.

But it’s also a beginning, as the first prisoners will enter Auckland Reform Women’s Prison in August, and some would say that’s when the real work begins.

This new facility is the first in New Zealand to be purpose built for women prisoners. On that basis, it is expected to better meet their needs for rehabilitation to life back in the community.

This is one of a cluster of four new prisons, being built to accommodate a rising prison population. Bail, sentencing and parole laws were all toughened in recent years, and police are resolving more crimes. Those factors have resulted in more prisoners being locked up for longer, even though the crime rate itself is at its lowest rate for a couple of decades.

Tackling crime effectively and reducing the growing prison numbers at the same time is a complex challenge. We need at the same time to protect society, support victims, assist offenders who genuinely want to turn their lives around, and target repeat offenders and hardened criminals and their activity.

Reducing the imprisonment rate is not something the government can achieve on its own. It needs commitment from across our society.

More early intervention measures will be important and have been shown to work both in New Zealand and overseas. It is the best way of achieving long-term reductions in crime and preventing people from ending up in prison, by helping to build stronger, healthier families and communities. But it is long term and slow work.

Within our prisons, we need to be better at rehabilitation, providing prisoners with pathways forward. Those pathways can include addressing addictions and criminal behaviours, skills training, work experience, and gaining qualifications as a means of rebuilding lives. The aim always is to reduce re-offending and give prisoners the chance to construct useful lives beyond the prison gate.

The opening of this Auckland Region Women’s Prison means that women from the upper North Island will now be able to serve their sentences close to their communities. This is a very important aspect of their rehabilitation.

Until now, the shortage of prison beds for women in the upper North Island has meant sending prisoners to other women’s prisons often far away from family and community support networks. As a result prisoners have been unable to see their children and partners regularly or easily, and have had to prepare for their release and return to their community from another part of New Zealand.

The prison has been designed especially to address the rehabilitation needs of prisoners. It aims to create an environment where motivated prisoners can get the help they need to turn around their lives. Getting self-motivation is often the hard part. I know that Corrections Officers put a lot of effort into encouraging inmates to be self-reliant, and to take responsibility for their own actions.

The aim is for prisoners to make their way through the system, and emerge as people with the skills to cope, to contribute to their communities, and to not re-offend.

Women prisoners here will attend programmes designed to support them to live healthy non-offending lives, from parenting skills to budgeting, alcohol and drug programmes, and violence prevention. They can complete programmes here which will confront offending behaviours and gain the tools to avoid re-offending.

Women make up a small but increasing percentage of the prisoner population. Today, there are around 430 women in New Zealand prisons, and unfortunately the number looks set to increase.

The majority of these prisoners are young and Maori, with low levels of educational achievement, and few work skills. Few have been in paid employment prior to their imprisonment.

Invariably they have complex problems related to both their offending and their ability to function on a day-to-day basis. They usually come to prison with health, substance abuse, and addiction issues. Violence has all too often been a way of life for them, and a large number of women prisoners have been abused. Also common are backgrounds of relationship difficulties

Many prisoners are mothers with children, who themselves are at high risk because of having a parent in prison. Before their imprisonment, many of these women prisoners were often also the sole childcare provider.

Accommodating prisoner mothers closer to home makes it easier for family and support networks to keep in contact. Here there is a nursery room so approved prisoners visit daily with their babies while they are being cared for in the community. Some prisoners may be eligible to live in a self care unit with their baby until the baby reaches six months old.

The women imprisoned here will generally serve sentences of two years or fewer. They will then be released back into our communities, so we do need to do all we can to support them becoming contributing members of society. Auckland Region Women’s Prison can help this to become a reality.

There’s a very special group of people here today who must be acknowledged for the work they have done, and will continue to do, at Auckland Women’s, to reduce re-offending.

They are Puukaki ki te Aakitai, the facility’s kaitiaki, or site guardians, for their involvement so far. I recognise that their work has really only just begun.

While Maori make up around fifteen per cent of New Zealand’s total population, they do account for almost half the prison muster. If solutions to the problem of the rising prison population are to work, they have to work for Maori.

Puukaki ki te Aakitai will be actively working in Auckland Region Women’s Prison running programmes to support the rehabilitation and reintegration of Maori prisoners into their communities. Their involvement has been and will be vital to the prison’s management, operation, programmes, and delivery of services, and to the wellbeing of everyone involved.

Overall our government’s goal is to continue to protect our communities, and further reduce crime.

The more successfully we can reintegrate prisoners, the more successful we will be at reducing re-offending.

It is now my pleasure to declare Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility officially open.