Waikeria Uprising: One-third of prison bed capacity destroyed in riots

An ongoing riot at the Waikeria prison has destroyed a third of its bed capacity with no end in sight.

Seventeen inmates remain in default after four surrendered overnight. The negotiators are working to defuse the situation that has dragged on for more than 24 hours.

Prisoners in rioting lit several fires in an exercise yard and many are still burning, says Department of Corrections Executive Director Jeremy Lightfoot.

The prisoners have climbed onto a roof and continue to cause chaos.

The exercise yard has shower doors, which may have been used as weapons, says Lightfoot.

Corrections do not know what caused the riots, but it is understood that the cause could be the lack of access to telephones.

No food has been supplied to the prisoners on the roof since the riots began.

Police negotiators are working alongside Corrections, but Lightfoot did not go into details about how they communicated with the prisoners.

The riots are the largest in a New Zealand prison since 2013, when more than 20 prisoners raged in Springhill prison.

Prisoners destroyed property during the nine-hour siege, smiling and waving at the cameras as they set two cell blocks on fire.

They also destroyed cells with improvised weapons. Three prison officers and two prisoners were injured.

About 100 prisoners had to be transferred to other prisons during the Spring Hill riots.

Corrections were unaware of the disturbances in Waikeria until the media reached out to them around noon yesterday.

Lightfoot says he would not send any of his staff to an unsafe environment, saying “we must focus on the threat to life.”

The damage to the upper jail has been “significant” and it is unlikely that the prisoners will be housed there again.

Lightfoot said the prison is losing about a third of the prison’s capacity, 250 beds, as a result of fire damage.

Approximately 45 New Zealand Fire and Emergency personnel are on the scene. At the height of the fire, there were 75.

There were concerns about smoke inhalation for prison staff, but no one was treated for injuries, Lightfoot says.

The most important stage of the response to the riots was to get the prisoners who did not participate and the staff to safety.

The union representative for the Prison Corrections Association, Alan Whitley, said that the prison section is well past its expiration date.

One of the prisoners’ personnel directors said that guards work in “horrible” conditions in that older section of the facility.

Whitley said the guards work in “horrible” conditions in that older section of the facility and are “quite nervous” working there today.