Police cells to ease crowding

Papakura police cells were expanded just five years ago. Picture / Brett Phibbs

A state-of-the-art police jail is being built at Manukau to cope with an overflow from the country's bulging prisons.

Counties-Manukau Police operations manager Inspector Dave Simpson said the new police station next to the Manukau District Court would include a bigger jail than the existing 27-cell block at the Papakura police station, which is now the district's only police jail.

The Papakura block expanded only about five years ago when the cells at Otahuhu were closed.

Although it had only eight prisoners when the Herald visited on Monday, it packed more than 50 into its 27 cells at the peak of the prison overcrowding problems late last year.

Police Minister Annette King turned the first sod this month on the new $13 million Manukau station on Wiri Station Rd, just across Barrowcliffe Place from the courthouse. It will include an underground tunnel connecting it with the courts.

The district's crime squad, team policing unit and licensing unit will also transfer to the new building when it opens about this time next year.

Mr Simpson said the district hired four jailers last year to handle the numbers of prisoners at Papakura.

Many asylum seekers and other people on immigration cases are held at Papakura because it is the nearest cell block to Auckland Airport.

They will be transferred to the new Manukau building.

Mr Simpson said the new cell unit had been designed to reduce the risk of prisoners harming themselves.

Nine inmates did so in police custody in the district in 2004-05, including five or six in the Papakura cells, but there have been no such incidents so far this financial year.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice has begun talking with local judges and lawyers about the need for more space at the Manukau courthouse, which opened in October 2000.

Manukau Professional Bar Association vice-president Pradeep Singh said the court building was already too small to cope with the district's court cases.

"There have been meetings with consultants looking at it with a view to expanding it and seeing what is required," he said.

"Unfortunately they don't have much more area to work on - we can't expand sideways. For the moment, the expansion will be within the existing floor area, providing more facilities."