At least once a year someone is arrested trying to smuggle a weapon into a prison.

Every year, at least one person is arrested trying to smuggle a weapon into New Zealand prisons.

Of the 18 occasions when firearms have been found inside prison premises since 2016, two were found within a secure prison perimeter.

In August 2019, Manawatū Prison staff found nuts, a bolt, a spring mechanism and a bullet on a person who was being brought in from the community. Corrections said the items could be made into a makeshift firearm when put together.

In February the following year, staff at Christchurch Men’s Prison discovered a “replica handgun hand-made from tissue paper and wrapping paper” while searching a prisoner before he entered a yard. The replica firearm could not fire ammunition – it was confiscated and disposed of.

However, most of the firearms were found in visitors’ cars, mainly air rifles and pellet guns.

Two of these were discovered in the last financial year, one at Christchurch Men’s Prison and the other at Waikeria (the site of the country’s worst prison riot in 2020), where three batches of ammunition were also found. Other ammunition and/or explosives were discovered at Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison, Mt Eden Correctional Centre, Northland Regional Correctional Centre and Spring Hill Correctional Centre, although no weapons were seized from these prisons.

In 2008, a group of inmates at Christchurch Men’s Prison used a homemade air gun to shoot at the prison building. The prisoners, who worked in the prison’s engineering unit, attached a hose to the end of an air compressor to fire pellets or other projectiles.

However, firearms are among the least commonly found weapons in prisons – the most common by far are improvised stabbing or cutting devices, with 456 of them found in the last financial year.

The corrections found fewer than 30 weapons from each other category – including clubs, knives, hobby tools (such as scissors or screwdrivers) or others (for example, batteries in a sock).

In December, a Mount Eden prisoner was stabbed multiple times with one of these “improvised weapons.”

Director of Custody Operations David Grigg said contraband created significant security risks in prisons and Corrections was constantly trying to stay ahead of new methods of smuggling items.

“Some people go to great lengths to smuggle contraband into prison. Contraband can be hidden on a person’s body when they enter prison, dropped off with mail or belongings, thrown over the perimeter fence or smuggled into the prison by visitors. Sometimes, the people we manage put considerable pressure on their partners, friends or associates to take the risk of trying to smuggle contraband into prison for them,” he said.

“When a person in prison is found in possession of contraband, they are charged with internal misconduct and, depending on the type of contraband found, they are referred to the New Zealand Police who are responsible for laying criminal charges. If a visitor is found in possession of contraband, they are given a prohibition notice which prohibits them from entering the prison premises for a specified period. Depending on the type of contraband, the matter may be referred to the New Zealand Police.”

The prison service uses a range of methods to prevent contraband from entering prisons, Mr Grigg said. These include scanners and X-rays, surveillance cameras and phone monitoring, as well as searches of vehicles, mail, prisoners and their property.

“We were also the first agency in New Zealand to train our detector dogs to detect new psychoactive substances, including synthetic cannabis. Our detector dog teams have a range of search capabilities and can also detect drugs, mobile phones, tobacco and illegally manufactured alcohol.”