Second prison for Paremoremo

Press, 6 September 1976, Page 13

Second prison for Paremoremo

PA ~ Wellington The Government has approved expenditure for a new 144-bed. medium-security prison at Paremoremo, the Minister of Justice (Mr Thomson) announced on ■Thursday. Siteworks for the new prison were begun last year and are nearly completed. Tenders should be called during October and construction will begin early in 1977. It will take about three years to complete. In addition, the existing prison settlement will have up to 40 more houses, to

accommodate the extra staff. Mr Thomson said there was overcrowding in several prisons. To deal with this a new institution near Wanganui was under construction and should be ready about May, 1977! another institution was being biult at Linton, in Manawatu, and would be ready in 1978; and a prison camp had fust been completed by prison labour at Rangipo. near Turangi. The Kaitoke youth centre at Wanganui — a small unit, for 25 inmates only — would be closed when the new institution there was comnleted.

In the meantime it is intended to use Kaitoke for minimum security adult inmates. Last year, an amendment to the Criminal Justice Act provided for a new sentence of corrective training. Mr Thomson said it had not been possible to implement this legislation because facilities for the new sentence were not available in the South Island. A new institution at Otatara, near Invercargill, would be built for this purpose, and was provided for in this year’s work programme. The institution will take 12 months to build.