Waikeria Prison Uprising: Tense Standoff Heads to Day Three

A tense standoff between inmates at the Waikeria prison and authorities is heading into its third day.

The prisoners have been causing riots since Tuesday afternoon, and 17 prisoners remain in default.

The damage that prisoners have caused to the Waikeria prison is extensive: one third of its bed capacity has been destroyed.

Prisoners in riots lit bonfires in an exercise yard before climbing to the roof on Tuesday, where they continued to cause chaos yesterday.

7.09am update:

Corrections Communications said just after 7 a.m. today that there had been no change in the situation overnight.

A police spokesman said their officers were also on the ground early this morning.

“The police are still present supporting them,” the spokesman said.

The riot is the largest in a New Zealand prison since 2013, when more than 20 prisoners committed a nine-hour riot at Springhill prison.

Corrections Department staff had not provided them with food since the riots began and were attempting to negotiate with the prisoners.

It is not known why the prisoners started protesting, but the reason could be an alleged lack of access to phones, Corrections executive director Jeremy Lightfoot said.

The department did not know the prisoners were about to demonstrate until after the media contacted them around noon Tuesday.

The checks immediately after found nothing. But when the prisoners were in the yard that afternoon, they started lighting a fire.

About 20 prisoners were thought to be in the yard at the time, but not all were involved in the riot.

On Tuesday night, some of the inmates in the courtyard and others who came out of their cells went to the roof where they lit mattresses.

Inmates also allegedly removed bathroom doors from their hinges and used them as weapons against prison staff.

Specialized advanced control and containment teams, made up of staff from a variety of prisons, have been in jail since Tuesday afternoon.

The union representative for the Association of Corrections of Prisons, Alan Whitley, said that the guards work in “horrible” conditions where the riots are taking place.

He said the facility section is past its expiration date.

The damage to the area has been “significant” and the prisoners will likely never be housed there again, Lightfoot said.

The prison has lost approximately a third of the prison capacity (250 beds) as a result of damage caused by the fire.

At the height of the fires, 75 Fire and Emergency personnel were in the prison, but as of mid-afternoon yesterday only 45 were there.

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

The rowdy inmates smiled and waved at the cameras as they set fire to two cell blocks and smashed cells with improvised weapons.

Three prison officials and two prisoners were injured and around 100 inmates had to be relocated to other prisons in the country.

Corrections had removed at least 49 prisoners from a unit in Waikeria since the riots began.

The most important stage of the response to the riots was getting uninvolved prisoners and staff out to safety, Lightfoot said.

However, he would not send personnel to an insecure environment to end the confrontation, saying that “we must focus on the threat to life.”

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