The Department of Corrections maintains that a flight taking prisoners from Ngawha Prison to other jails around the country had nothing to do with part of the jail sinking.
A chartered flight left the Kerikeri airstrip at 9.30am on October 21 with about a dozen prisoners from Ngawha
bound for a Wellington facility.
The department said the flight was organised because of a shortage of beds at the Northern Region Corrections Facility - Ngawha Prison - just east of Kaikohe.
The flight was well guarded, with police and security out in force and the airstrip closed to the public.
However, once news of the flight - dubbed "Con Air" after the US action film set on a prisoner transport aircraft - became public, speculation mounted that the prisoners were being moved from an area that is sinking so it can be repaired.
But Corrections denied this. A spokesman said no prisoners had been moved from the prison as a result of plans for remedial work at that time.
"The department's statement earlier this week was, and is, correct. Prisoners from NRCF were transferred to manage a high demand for beds for remand prisoners in the northern region.
"Transferring prisoners around the country to manage the muster is business as usual for the department," he said.
The Northern Advocate revealed earlier this year that a pod at the prison had sunk 13cm and would cost taxpayers up to $2 million to rectify.
The work is thought to involve boring up to 91 giant screws 20m into the ground below the sinking pod.
After steadfastly denying the prison - opened in 2005 - was sinking, the department said last year that there were structural problems at the $137 million facility.
The spokesman said the department had tendered for the work and was in the final stages of negotiating the terms of the tender.
No start date had been set for the repair work to begin.
- NORTHERN ADVOCATE
