Ngawha ready to take heat off jails

The country's newest prison, the $132.8 million Northland Region Corrections facility - otherwise known as Ngawha prison - opens tomorrow on a rural site just east of Kaikohe.

Corrections Minister Paul Swain will formally open the prison, which will eventually contain 350 inmates within a medium-to-high-security institutional classification.
The first inmates are expected at Ngawha late next month.

Excluding earthworks, construction on the Ngawha site has taken a bit more than two years.

But even before earthworks began to stabilise the site near an active geothermal field, the controversial project had to survive three years of wrangling. There have been Far North District Council, Northland Regional Council and Environment Court appeal hearings, legal challenges in the High Court and Court of Appeal and on-site protest action.

Protest by Northland Maori led at one stage to a lengthy occupation on part of the site near its main entrance from State Highway 12.

Corrections Department spokesman John Hamilton said more things needed to be done before the prison was ready to receive inmates.

The site will operate as a correctional facility from this week but the first intake of inmates will not arrive until operational testing of security systems and procedures are complete. This includes total camera coverage on the site.

"Once testing is complete and we're fully satisfied we are ready to provide a safe and secure containment of inmates, they can be brought in," Mr Hamilton said.

He said that, subject to satisfactory testing, the department expected the first group of inmates to arrive about the end of next month.

Inmate numbers, with many of them likely to be Northlanders, are then set to rise to the 350 maximum by the end of this year.

The new jail, on 215ha of land, will cost more than $132.8 million.

Growing business

* Ngawha prison has been built to cope with swelling inmate numbers.

* The average prison muster over the past year was 6865.

* It is forecast to reach 7880 in the year 2010.

* Hampton Downs prison near Meremere will house 650 inmates and will be completed in mid-2007.