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The Corrections Department is to spend $180,000 hiring a person to watch staff interacting with prisoners at Auckland Women's Prison.
The watcher is to observe how "staff integrate/engage in active management/conversations with prisoners as they move around the facility" and "visually monitor paths of travel between, and within, the various zones".
National's law and order spokesman Simon Power lashed out yesterday at the department's decision to hire the contractor to "watch staff chatting with prisoners and prisoners moving around the grounds".
"Surely the sort of information they are seeking could be gathered by existing staff. They have 100 analysts in head office, so why do they need external consultants? It seems this is another example of Corrections' cavalier use of taxpayers' money."
He said the prison was a monument to Labour's bad planning, resulting in massive budget blowouts.
"In 2003 they estimated it would cost $58.4 million to build, but it was finally opened last year for a final cost of $158 million - including a $2 million bill for landscaping," Mr Power said.
"You would have thought Corrections had spent enough on this prison without spending even more money on consultants."
Corrections' manager of strategic analysis, Peter Johnston, said the contractor would evaluate the effectiveness of a new operating philosophy, which included greater staff and inmate interaction, more community involvement with the prison and the ability for prisoners to earn greater freedom (within the prison) if they behaved well.
He said the contractor would begin work in May and be at the jail for two years.
