Whanganui Prison is operating reasonably well overall, but a new independent inspection has exposed significant gaps in healthcare, mental health, rehabilitation and release planning at a prison where almost six out of every ten people incarcerated are Māori.
The Office of the Inspectorate has released its latest inspection of Whanganui Prison and the New Plymouth Remand Centre, following an examination carried out between late October and early November 2025.
Inspectors found plenty that was working.
Relationships between staff and prisoners were generally strong, the prison was clean and well maintained, prisoners had good access to employment and education, staff cohesiveness was high and the kaupapa Māori rehabilitation programme Te Tirohanga was recording strong completion rates.
But the report also identifies weaknesses that raise a much bigger question for Corrections — whether enough is being done while people are behind the wire to prevent them returning.
Almost six in ten prisoners are Māori
At the time of the inspection, Whanganui Prison held 522 prisoners.
Of those, 308 — or 59 percent — were Māori.
A further 33 percent were New Zealand European, 5.6 percent Pacific peoples and 1.7 percent identified with other ethnicities.
There were 340 sentenced prisoners and 182 people on remand, meaning around 35 percent of the prison population had not yet reached the sentenced stage of the justice system.
The scale of Māori representation means shortcomings identified in rehabilitation, healthcare, mental health and reintegration have particular consequences for whānau Māori.
It also sits uneasily alongside Corrections’ stated objective of reducing Māori overrepresentation within the prison system.
Te Tirohanga showing what can work
One of the strongest findings for Te Ao Māori concerns Te Tirohanga, the prison’s kaupapa Māori rehabilitation programme.
Inspectors found high programme completion rates, while 49 prisoners were in Whānui, Whanganui’s Māori Focus Unit, at the beginning of the inspection.
The findings provide evidence that culturally grounded rehabilitation programmes can play an important role inside the prison.
However, the report also identifies a significant problem with access.
High-security, remand and segregated prisoners had fewer rehabilitation opportunities.
That becomes particularly significant when more than one-third of the prison population is being held on remand.
The result is the potential for a two-tier rehabilitation system where some prisoners have meaningful opportunities to address the causes of offending while others have substantially fewer options.
Prisoners approaching parole without release plans
Reintegration is another area attracting concern.
Inspectors found some prisoners approaching their parole eligibility dates without release plans in place.
Some had not participated in a whānau hui, while others reported uncertainty or limited progress around preparations for their return to the community.
Successful release from prison can depend on having somewhere safe to live, access to employment or income, healthcare, addiction or mental-health support and strong connections with whānau.
Without those foundations, people can return to exactly the circumstances that contributed to offending in the first place.
For a prison where Māori make up the clear majority, shortcomings in reintegration also risk reinforcing the cycle of Māori imprisonment and reoffending.
Healthcare under pressure
Some of the more concerning findings involve prison healthcare.
Inspectors identified inconsistent triaging of health requests, problems prioritising waiting lists and appointments, and reports of prisoners waiting significant periods after requesting medical attention.
Staffing shortages had contributed to overdue health assessments and outstanding health reminders, while monitoring of chronic health conditions had also been affected.
Whanganui Prison had additionally lost its cold-chain certification, preventing vaccinations from being administered on site.
There were positive developments.
Changes to the administration of controlled medicines and the placement of custodial staff within the Health Centre had improved efficiency and reduced unnecessary prisoner movements.
But the overall picture suggests a health service dealing with significant operational pressure.
Mental-health capability questioned
Mental health represents another important concern.
The inspection found health staff had not completed core primary mental-health training.
The management of prisoners considered at risk also raised issues around dignity and procedure.
CCTV monitoring within Whanganui’s Intervention and Support Unit captured prisoners’ toilet areas without pixelation, while observations of at-risk prisoners were occurring at predictable rather than random intervals.
At the New Plymouth Remand Centre, inspectors were concerned about the location of an at-risk cell in front of the Police processing counter and identified issues around procedures affecting female prisoners under at-risk management.
These findings concern people who can be among the most vulnerable within the corrections system.
Concerns for rangatahi behind bars
Young prisoners also feature prominently in the report.
At the beginning of the inspection, eight prisoners were under 20 and another 29 were aged between 20 and 24.
Staff raised concerns about the availability of suitable accommodation for young prisoners, while rangatahi reported boredom and limited meaningful engagement.
Inspectors also discovered Youth Case Managers were unfamiliar with a key assessment used to help determine appropriate placement for young adults.
That raises questions about whether the corrections environment is adequately equipped to meet the specific developmental and rehabilitation needs of younger prisoners.
Whānau connections harder than they need to be
Maintaining connections with whānau also emerged as an issue.
Inspectors found delays approving visitors and no weekend prison visits.
For children, partners and whānau who work or attend school during the week, that can make maintaining regular contact considerably harder.
Whānau connections are not simply about making prison more comfortable.
Strong relationships can become a critical part of rehabilitation and reintegration, particularly when a prisoner eventually returns to the community.
If Corrections expects whānau to play a role in keeping people out of prison after release, maintaining those relationships while someone is incarcerated becomes equally important.
Staff raise their own concerns
The report found generally positive relationships among staff, but there were also concerns about workplace culture.
Some employees reported behaviour they regarded as bullying or confrontational from senior managers and lacked confidence their concerns would be taken seriously.
Unions raised concerns about staffing ratios, increasing workloads, an ageing workforce and the absence of a dedicated Management Unit.
Some non-custodial employees also reported being locked in interview rooms with prisoners without sufficient custodial oversight.
Inspectors separately identified inconsistencies in security screening at the gatehouse, including weaknesses around secondary screening, electronic devices, contractor tools and some prisoner searches.
A prison working — but rehabilitation remains the test
The Whanganui report is not a picture of a prison in crisis.
In many areas it is positive.
Staff-prisoner relationships are generally strong. Employment and education opportunities are available. Te Tirohanga is achieving strong completion rates. The facility itself is well maintained.
But those successes make the gaps identified by inspectors even more important.
A prison can be secure, orderly and efficiently run while still falling short if people leave without having addressed the causes that brought them there.
For Māori, that challenge is particularly stark.
When 59 percent of the people inside Whanganui Prison are Māori, improving access to rehabilitation, healthcare, mental-health services, whānau connections and properly planned reintegration is not simply a corrections issue.
It is a Māori justice issue.
The ultimate measure of a successful prison cannot therefore be only what happens behind the wire.
The headline finding: operationally sound, but important gaps
The inspection took place between 29 October and 7 November 2025 and covered Whanganui Prison and the New Plymouth Remand Centre. There were 522 prisoners: 340 sentenced and 182 on remand, or 35 percent. The Inspectorate interviewed 102 prisoners and 172 staff, managers, union representatives and service providers, alongside direct observation and examination of prison and health records.
Chief Inspector Janis Adair describes Whanganui as operating well overall. Staff generally had strong relationships with prisoners, the site was clean and well maintained, and many prisoners had access to employment and education. The Inspectorate also found strong staff cohesiveness and generally positive prisoner feedback.
That is important. This isn’t a report describing a prison in institutional crisis.
But several findings point to systemic vulnerabilities that become much more significant when viewed through the lens of rehabilitation and reducing Māori imprisonment.
1. Māori are the majority — making rehabilitation a Māori issue
The most striking figure for Waatea is the prison population itself.
Of 522 prisoners:
308 — 59% — were Māori.
Pākehā/New Zealand European prisoners accounted for 33 percent, Pacific peoples 5.6 percent and other ethnicities 1.7 percent.
That means virtually every major weakness identified in rehabilitation, healthcare, mental health and reintegration disproportionately becomes a Māori justice issue.
Corrections’ own refreshed Hōkai Rangi strategy identifies three central outcomes: improved public safety, reduced reoffending and reduced Māori overrepresentation in the Corrections system.
Against that objective, there is an obvious tension in the report: Whanganui appears reasonably successful at safely managing people while they are incarcerated, but there are gaps in some of the very services required to reduce their likelihood of returning.
2. Te Tirohanga stands out as a genuine success
One of the strongest positive findings is Te Tirohanga, the kaupapa Māori rehabilitation programme.
The Inspectorate found high completion rates among prisoners participating in the programme. It also recorded 49 prisoners in Whānui, the prison’s Māori Focus Unit, at the beginning of the inspection.
That deserves attention because it demonstrates that the report isn’t suggesting rehabilitation at Whanganui is broadly failing.
There are programmes that appear to be working.
The bigger question is who gets access to them.
3. A two-tier rehabilitation problem emerges
This is probably the most important policy finding.
The Inspectorate found limited rehabilitation opportunities for high-security, remand and segregated prisoners.
At the same time, 35 percent of Whanganui’s population was on remand.
That creates a structural problem.
The people who may have substantial needs and potentially significant barriers to successful reintegration can spend months in custody without receiving the same rehabilitation opportunities available elsewhere in the prison.
The Inspectorate’s earlier national work on young prisoners found similar problems across the corrections system, particularly for young people held in high-security environments who struggled to access education, rehabilitation and reintegration opportunities.
For public safety, that matters.
Prisons don’t simply have a responsibility to contain people. The Inspectorate explicitly assesses whether prisoners are prepared for release and helped to reduce their likelihood of reoffending.
4. Release planning is a red flag
Closely connected is the finding around parole and reintegration.
Some prisoners told inspectors they were approaching their parole eligibility date without a release plan. Some had not participated in a whānau hui, while others reported limited progress or uncertainty around fundamental reintegration arrangements.
This is arguably one of the report’s most important findings for communities.
A prisoner approaching release needs somewhere to live, income, health support, connections with whānau, potentially addiction or mental-health services, and pathways into employment.
If those pieces aren’t organised, the risk isn’t confined to the prisoner.
It transfers directly back into whānau and communities.
For a prison where almost six in ten prisoners are Māori, inadequate reintegration planning also risks perpetuating precisely the Māori overrepresentation Hōkai Rangi is intended to reduce.
5. Healthcare contains some of the most concerning findings
The health section deserves serious scrutiny.
The Inspectorate found inconsistent triaging of health requests, inconsistent prioritisation of waiting lists and appointment scheduling, and reports from prisoners of long waits after submitting health requests.
Recent staffing shortages had resulted in outstanding health reminders and overdue assessments for older prisoners. Monitoring of chronic conditions was also limited because nurse portfolios had been delayed.
Whanganui had additionally lost its cold-chain certification, meaning vaccines couldn’t be administered on site.
Yet there was also an interesting positive finding: assigning custodial staff to the Health Centre and changing how controlled medicines were administered improved efficiency, reduced prisoner movements and supported health staff dealing with higher-risk prisoners.
So again, the picture isn’t one of wholesale failure. It shows innovation occurring alongside basic service-delivery shortcomings.
6. Mental health is particularly concerning
The finding I would place near the top of any Waatea story is this:
Health staff had not completed core primary mental-health training.
For a correctional environment, that is significant.
There were further concerns at New Plymouth Remand Centre.
Its at-risk cell is positioned in front of the Police processing counter, which the Inspectorate considered inappropriate for somebody experiencing mental distress.
There were also procedural issues potentially leaving female prisoners under restrictive at-risk management longer than necessary.
Inspectors additionally found CCTV monitoring inside Whanganui’s Intervention and Support Unit captured prisoners’ toilet areas without pixelation, raising dignity and privacy concerns. Observations of at-risk prisoners were being made at predictable rather than random intervals.
Those are not cosmetic issues. They concern the treatment of people at potentially their most vulnerable.
7. Young prisoners are another weak point
The report raises another major concern around rangatahi.
Staff themselves expressed concern about the lack of suitable accommodation for young prisoners. Young prisoners described boredom and limited meaningful engagement with custodial staff.
More remarkably, Youth Case Managers told inspectors they did not know what the Assessment of Placement for Young Adults was — despite it being a key assessment relevant to youth placement.
There were eight prisoners under 20 and another 29 aged between 20 and 24 when inspectors arrived.
This connects with the Inspectorate’s wider national investigation of young prisoners, which found young people frequently have complex histories involving trauma, poverty, cultural dislocation, limited education, addiction and gang involvement. It also found limited opportunities for young Māori and Pasifika prisoners to maintain or develop cultural connections.
That makes the shortcomings identified at Whanganui more than an administrative problem.
8. Whānau connection is being unnecessarily constrained
Another finding easily overlooked concerns prison visits.
The Inspectorate found delays approving visitors and no weekend visits, making it difficult for some children and whānau to visit prisoners during the working week.
For rehabilitation, that matters.
If Corrections wants prisoners to maintain healthy connections with children, partners, kaumātua and wider whānau, a visiting system that effectively requires those people to be available during weekdays creates an unnecessary barrier.
This is particularly relevant when release planning is supposed to involve whānau.
9. Staff culture isn’t universally healthy either
The Inspectorate found generally high confidence in leadership, but that positive finding comes with a serious qualification.
Several staff reported behaviour they perceived as bullying and confrontational conduct by some senior managers, while some lacked confidence their concerns would be taken seriously.
Staff safety was another concern.
Some non-custodial employees reported being locked in interview rooms with prisoners without adequate custodial oversight. Some corrections officers were also concerned that, because there is no dedicated Management Unit, prisoners involved in assaults could be temporarily removed but returned to the same unit only hours later.
The unions also raised concerns about staff-to-prisoner ratios, increasing workloads, the ageing workforce and the absence of a Management Unit.
10. There are basic security weaknesses
The Inspectorate observed inconsistent screening at the prison gatehouse.
Some people activating metal detectors weren’t subjected to the expected secondary screening. Electronic devices weren’t always checked consistently, contractor tools weren’t being checked at the gatehouse, and some rub-down searches were insufficiently thorough.
That sits somewhat awkwardly beside the wider conclusion that the prison is operating safely.
It doesn’t mean Whanganui is unsafe, but it does identify vulnerabilities that could allow contraband into the prison.
What I think the real story is
The strongest angle isn’t Whanganui Prison slammed by Inspectorate, because that would overstate the report.
Nor is it simply Whanganui Prison gets clean bill of health, because that would understate some serious findings.
The more revealing story is:
Whanganui Prison is functioning reasonably well at incarceration — but the Inspectorate has exposed gaps in the systems designed to stop people coming back.
And for Waatea there is an even stronger dimension.
When 59 percent of the prison population is Māori, limited rehabilitation for remand and high-security prisoners, inadequate release planning, gaps in mental-health capability and barriers to whānau engagement aren’t peripheral administrative problems.
They go directly to the central challenge of Māori overrepresentation in the criminal justice system.
There is a positive counterpoint: Te Tirohanga’s strong completion rates, extensive prison employment and generally constructive relationships between staff and prisoners show Whanganui has foundations it can build upon.
The policy question is whether Corrections can take those successes and extend them to the prisoners currently missing out — particularly remand, high-security, segregated and younger prisoners.
That is where this report shifts from being an inspection of one prison to a much bigger question about the purpose of incarceration in Aotearoa:
Are we simply keeping people securely behind the wire, or are we doing enough while they are there to make sure they don’t come back?
