KEY POINTS:
Many prison staff have family links to the gangs that cause most of the problems in New Zealand jails, the Corrections Department has admitted.
"We do have a number of staff who have got gang members in their family," said acting general manager operations Karen Urwin. "That happens
in a small country. You're always going to get some staff with family members on the other side of the law."
She did not know how many staff had family members in gangs.
She said that while it had the potential to pose problems, the department could not discriminate against job applicants because their family members - or the applicants themselves - were in a gang.
Nor could the department keep tabs on which staff have gang members in the family, though staff have to notify management if a family member is brought into prison.
Ms Urwin said there was nothing to suggest that gangs had tried to have members hired into the prison system.
Gangs are behind much of the violence, intimidation and contraband problems that plague the prison system.
In July two Auckland Prison inmates with Black Power affiliations attacked a corrections officer, knocking him unconscious.
An officer was dismissed from Christchurch Men's Prison this year for passing tobacco to an inmate with gang ties. It is understood the officer was suspected of associating with gang members.
Almost a quarter of the prison population - about 2000 inmates - are identified as affiliated with a gang, and the number of youth gang members is increasing.
Meanwhile the department is expecting to have to use police cells to house inmates at least until November because of a rise in the number of prisoners.
The muster was 8372 at the start of the month - it was 5336 in 1997-98 and 7456 in 2005-06 - and continues to climb.
"Basically we have no spare capacity," Ms Urwin said.
The department has reopened the Larch unit at Tongariro/Rangipo Prison, which holds 60 prisoners, to ease pressure on police cells.
At the start of the month there were 138 prisoners in police cells. The department can access a further 41 police cells and, if these fill, a further 98 court cells.
The opening of Spring Hills Prison, South Auckland, in November will add 650 beds. Policies to increase the number of home detentions and community-based sentences should also ease pressure.