Robberies, gang activity, illegal drug use and a raft of other offending were being planned by prisoners at the Otago Corrections Facility, it was revealed after a telephone monitoring trial was carried out.
Otago Corrections Facility manager Jack Harrison said the trial monitored calls on payphones available to prisoners at the new facility.
As a result, some prisoners had faced charges after the information was passed on to police, he said. Mr Harrison said improving the safety and security of prisons was a priority for the Corrections Department.
The telephone monitoring project, the pilot of which was trialled at the Otago Corrections Facility late last year, would cost $567,000 over four years and was being rolled out at prisons throughout New Zealand.
From the end of June, all calls from prisons in New Zealand will be recorded and monitoring will occur. The Corrections Act allows the department to record and monitor all calls made by prisoners from a prison payphone.
‘‘These calls will be randomly monitored in order to detect and investigate offences committed by prisoners and those that commit crimes on their behalf,'' he said.
Mr Harrison said the department had an obligation to inform prisoners and call recipients that their calls were being monitored. A message at the beginning of a call was the easiest way to inform them.
The department had evaluated the technology available for monitoring prisoners' phone calls since 2005, he said. The trial at the Otago Corrections Facility assessed the suitability of the system for all prisons.
The existing phone contract was due to expire, so a replacement which would fit in with a phone monitoring system was needed.
Corrections staff using the monitoring technology would be able to identify disallowed numbers for prisoners, such as the Office of the Ombudsman, legal representatives, members of Parliament and government agencies such as Work and Income New Zealand and the Inland Revenue Department.
Mr Harrison said telephone monitoring was one of the security tools introduced by Corrections to stop prisoners committing crimes from inside prison walls.
Other measures included a single point of entry to prisons, greater search powers at prison gates and the creation of the department's crime prevention intelligence capability (CPIC) team.
Changes to the Corrections Act would soon give the department greater powers to search prisoners' mail, he added.
