Under National’s watch, prisoner numbers are climbing (up 20% since they took power), with projections from the Department of Corrections showing no slowdown in sight. Their answer? A $1.9 billion splurge on new prison beds, including the controversial Waikeria mega-prison expansion. This isn’t about public safety; it’s about entrenching a system that thrives on failure. National’s “tough on crime” rhetoric ignores the root causes of crime: poverty, mental health, and systemic inequity. Instead of investing in communities and people’s futures, they’re throwing their hands in the air and simply building more cages.
On Thursday, Stuff reported:
Corrections setting up women's unit at Waikeria as female prisoner numbers surge
It was not uncommon for women to be housed on a men’s prison site - the Nikau Unit at Waikeria had previously housed women prior to 2006, and more recently women were housed in units at Rimutaka Prison between 2017 and 2020.
Waikeria Prison, in Waikato south of Te Awamutu, has room for about 460 male prisoners. A development nearing completion will add 500 inmate beds and a 96-bed dedicated mental health ward.
Work has also started on another 810-bed expansion, expected to open in 2029.
National’s policies, like the reintroduction of mandatory minimum sentences and cuts to rehabilitation programs, are a return to yesterdays thinking, an outdated ideological failure by politicians unconcerned with the social destruction their austerity creates. The Sentencing (Reform) Act 2024, rammed through with minimal consultation, ties judges’ hands, ensuring longer sentences for minor offences, crimes of survival often caused because people are becoming increasingly desperate.
Māori, who make up 52% of prisoners despite being 17% of the population, bear the brunt. This isn’t justice; it’s institutional racism dressed up as law and order. The government’s own data shows reoffending rates are unchanged, yet they slash funding for iwi-led rehabilitation initiatives that actually work. Why? Because prevention doesn’t fuel their tough-on-crime narrative or placate their mates who want to privatise our entire prison system.
The coalition of chaos’ policies might sound good on talk-back radio, but they crumble under any real scrutiny. Building prisons while gutting mental health services (down $200 million since 2023) isn’t a plan; it’s a betrayal of the egalitarian principles New Zealand was founded on.
Right wing politicians, like Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell, with his expensive suits and polished lies, know the stats. National knows that 70% of prisoners have untreated mental health issues. They know that kids, many of them traumatised by abuse within state care institutions, are funneled into jail cells. Yet they choose to demonize rather than uplift. Mitchell exemplifies that uncaring disconnect we see throughout a government only interested in drumming up people’s fears for votes, not any real solutions to help save people’s lives.
The ripple effects are toxic. Families are torn apart, communities broken and stigmatized, and the cycle of poverty and crime deepens. Every dollar spent on a prison cell is a dollar stolen from schools, hospitals, and housing. Money the government is investing to steal people's futures. National’s vision is a New Zealand where the poor are locked up for being poor, the rich sleep easy, and the prison-industrial complex thrives. It’s a moral and fiscal disaster, a failing of the hierarchical system that will take many generations to fix.
New Zealand deserves better. A government that invests in people, not just punishment. One that tackles the causes of crime, not just its symptoms. National’s prison obsession is a policy failure wrapped in human tragedy. It’s time to call it out, tear it down, and build a society that doesn’t continue to lock up its future.
