Ngawha prison is filling up fast - the controversial new facility now has about 280 inmates, just 70 short of the maximum it was built to hold.
Prison site manager Mike Hughes said inmate numbers were well ahead of schedule and the prison was on track to be full by the
end of October.
"I guess it's a reflection things are going well," Mr Hughes said.
"We took an extra 80 or so in July, we're not as far ahead as that now... it's back into the original planned build-up."
The vast majority of inmates at the prison, which opened in March, were from Northland.
"All the Northlanders available to be here, are here."
Several internal and external employment initiatives were also up and running.
Ten minimum security inmates were working off-site in the forestry industry with the aim of obtaining employment before their release, and other prisoners were on internal work programmes.
Mr Hughes said inmates were adjusting to the prison's policy of allowing freer movement within the correctional facility.
"It operates in a different way - they have much freer movement around the site, and that's why it has a much more secure perimeter."
Ngawha is the first of four new prisons to be opened around the country, with others planned in Auckland, Otago and Springfield.
The correctional facility has been hailed as a new weapon in the fight to reduce re-offending.
About 25 percent of people freed from prison re-offend within a year and the Department of Corrections has said the prison's integration of tikanga Maori - Maori customs and protocol - would help reduce reoffending.
Meanwhile, investigations are continuing into what caused a crack in the wall and ceiling of a building last month. Critics of the choice of site, near the Ngawha Springs geothermal field, had warned the ground was unstable.
