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A major report to be released next week will recommend about 70 changes to the way the Corrections Department transports prisoners.
The report - prompted by the death of teenager Liam Ashley - will be tabled in Parliament on Tuesday and is expected to come down hard on department policy.
The investigation was announced last August by Chief Ombudsman John Belgrave, following the death of Ashley, 17, who was killed by another prisoner while being transported from court to prison.
A series of errors led to Ashley sharing a compartment with prisoner George Baker in the back of a Chubb security van. Baker was later jailed for life for Ashley's murder.
After the death Corrections Minister Damien O'Connor set up a review of prisoner transportation, but that review has yet to report back.
The Government is considering options for transporting at-risk prisoners, including waist restraints, separate compartments for each prisoner, or a compartment for a guard in the back of vans.
Corrections Association president Beven Hanlon said the transport system needed a decent overhaul.
He said every inmate should be restrained and the duty of shifting inmates should fall on corrections officers, rather than contracted security guards.
"At the moment we don't handcuff people, and when we do it's with their hands in front of them, so they've basically got a weapon."
After another incident in April, when a prisoner was badly beaten by four other inmates while in a prison van travelling to Waitakere District Court, the Ashley family accused the department of failing to learn from their son's death.
The victim had asked to be segregated from the other inmates because he feared for his safety, but they had been placed in the same compartment.
Corrections assistant general manager Bryan McMurray defended the department at the time, saying all standard operating procedures had been followed.
"There are about 2500 prisoners from a population of 8000 who have requested segregation, or are segregated for some reason."
