Prison riots surge as overcrowding strains Corrections staff resources

Prison guards and staff now face more and more violent incidents and riots, with prisoners more concentrated, their union said a day after a riot at Waikato's Spring Hill facility. Photo / Corrections

By Pretoria Gordon of RNZ

Violence and riots in prisons are now increasingly common as a result of higher prison populations, a group representing Corrections staff says, a day after a fiery prison riot in Waikato.

On Saturday afternoon, a group of prisoners refused to leave an exercise yard at Spring Hill Corrections Facility south of Meremere, damaging property and lighting fires, resulting in the prison going into lockdown.

Fire engines and ambulance crews were sent to the facility and a specialist Advanced Control and Restraint team was dispatched.

Floyd du Plessis, the president of the Corrections Association, the union for Corrections workers, told RNZ that prison staff were facing more and more violent incidents and outdated staffing levels were compounding the problem.

“It’s a very dangerous situation. Any time when you’ve got a number of prisoners threatening harm, reports of potential weapons, it’s definitely a dangerous situation for staff and it’s only through the training and fast thinking of staff that [they are] able to bring it to a close relatively quickly and safely.”

The events on Saturday had been isolated to the yard and contained by staff, he said. “There was no risk of it spreading further in the way that the staff managed to deal with it and bring it to a close.”

Riots were not uncommon in New Zealand prisons, du Plessis said, and they were increasing.

“We have events like this that happen on a regular basis across the country. There’s just some of them that tend to become public knowledge and shared wider. But it’s actually more common than people realise.

“Spring Hill itself is one of those prisons that do hold quite a number of high-profile prisoners, volatile prisoners. And so you do have these incidents that do tend to come at that higher level.

“The reality is these situations are getting more common, they are becoming more violent and the reality is it’s something that we do need to urgently address.”

The association had been campaigning for improved security measures to help shut down disorder quicker and more safely, du Plessis said.

“We have been lobbying for that. We need better safety equipment. And that’s something that we are going to continue to push.

“The other factor is we need more staff. Our prisons are staffed based on a ratio that was developed many, many years ago ... [the] problem is prisons have become far more violent than they used to be. And so those calculations just aren’t fit for purpose.

“So in places like Spring Hill, for high-security prisoners, you’re talking about two staff managing up to 30 prisoners. That’s just not safe. These are the most violent people in our country and we expect two staff to manage them without incident. That’s just not realistic.

“We need to re-look at it and we need more staff in the prisons and we need to give them tools to safely operate.”

Du Plessis said more prisoners were being packed into the same spaces, there were not enough beds to manage the situation and staffing levels were too low.

“What we’re doing then is we’re condensing more and more of these people into tight spots. We have a serious problem with available beds. So across the country, we’re jam-packing everyone in as tightly as we can.

“And what that means is it ... doesn’t give us room to move people around or to manage the people better. And so unfortunately that does create tension, which leads to violence. We urgently need more beds across the country and staff to staff them.”

Staff also want access to other safety measures, du Plessis said, such as PepperBall ranged weapons which are promoted as non-lethal.

“That’s something that we can use at a distance that can quickly bring these things to a close. But we need the Government to work with us to change legislation and put them in place.”

RNZ has contacted Corrections and the Minister of Corrections for comment.

On Saturday, Custodial Services commissioner Leigh Marsh praised Corrections staff who contained the Spring Hill riot without any injury to staff or prisoners.

– RNZ