Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Prisoners' pay rates need to be increased, say reform advocates, who have labelled the current rates of 20 to 60 cents an hour as practically slave labour.
The rates have not been touched for 20 years, and a High Court judge found in 2022 that the Minister for Corrections had failed to do their duty by not setting new pay rates.
Since then, the corrections minister has approved new rates under the Corrections Act, but did not increase them at all, and critics say they are not fit for purpose at their current level.
Ex-prisoner Thomas Cheng took Corrections to court over pay rates and won. The judge found it unlawful that successive Corrections ministers had not set new rates for prisoner pay under the 2004 Corrections Act.
Cheng said the current pay rates were discouraging.
"It just says that what you do is not worth anything, essentially. It becomes just like slave labour... just packaged in another way."
Cheng said the wages may have been worth something when the rates were set back in 2004, but with inflation they were nearly worthless.
While in prison, inmates are provided with three meals and supper each day, as well as clothing and hygiene items. Prisoners' pay can be used to buy additional items or be saved for their release.
Cheng believed paying prisoners more fairly for work was crucial in helping rehabilitate them.
"You have a family... the main thing that you want is to provide for them and then that's money. So the best kind of rehabilitation you can give them is finances. Teach them financial stuff and then you actually incentivise them."
Cheng was imprisoned for importing and supplying methamphetamine, but has since been given parole and deported to his home country of Singapore.
Canterbury Howard League for Penal Reform co-president Cosmo Jeffery served time in prison in the early 2000s.
He agreed that fairly paid work was important, pointing to open prisons in places like Switzerland as examples of how the system could work.
"In that case people got close to a working wage. They took about a quarter for their keep... then a quarter was given to a charity... the rest of it was put away for when they got out, they had quite a little nest egg that they could set up and get back into society."
The High Court judgement noted the Corrections department has considered revising the pay rates several times, most recently in August 2022, when it agreed to a "comprehensive review" of the rates.
In 2023, then-Minister of Corrections Kelvin Davis set the pay rate - but kept it unchanged so prisoners would still be paid between 20 and 60 cents per hour.
Barrister Tim Stephens KC represented Cheng in the case, and said New Zealand could be failing to meet the UN Mandela rules on the treatment of prisoners.
"That includes the proposition that there shall be a system of equitable remuneration of the work of prisoners. It does seem to me that guideline or accepted standard is something that is not being met currently."
In a statement, Minister for Corrections Mark Mitchell said the department was reviewing the prisoner incentive allowance framework, which included developing a framework to ensure prisoner rates of earnings were regularly reviewed.
Mitchell expected to receive more information on the review later in the year.
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