The maximum security prison in New Zealand: a social-political history

Abstract

The Maximum Security Prison in New Zealand is an inquiry into the history of prison security in this country. It briefly reviews the emergence and development of New Zealand's first top custody establishment up to 1945, then gives a detailed account of policy and practice from then until contemporary times. The examination provided here is both wide and intricate, attempting as it does to evaluate the many factors which have contributed to changes in the post-war period. Some of these moves have been precipitated by socio-political forces outside the jail, some have been created by administrators, while others have been forced by action from the prisoners themselves. Georg Hegel once said that governments have never learned anything from history, nor acted upon the principles it has yielded. Where the Department of Justice is concerned, recurrent crises suggest truth in Hegel's profession. But this need not be so. Understanding the dialectics of change in maximum security is viewed by the present research as fundamental to the avoidance of trauma in closed prisons, and to the drafting of a provident policy for the lockup institutions of the future.