How big should a prison cell be?

Newsroom

21-06-2025

Comment: The day after the 596-bed Waikeria prison expansion opened on June 5, 2025, The Press reported that Invercargill prison had New Zealand's smallest prison cells measuring 6 square metres. Our newest prison was thus juxtaposed with our oldest one, which opened 115 years ago.
Over that period, the Prisons Act became the Penal Institutions Act and then the Corrections Act. Despite this centenary of legislative change, it is still possible to build a prison cell only 6 square metres because we have no legal minimum-cell size in New Zealand.
But it's not just legislation that avoids specifying a minimum standard. Neither the Ombudsman's Expectations document, nor the Prison Inspectorate's Inspection Standards commit to a number. The United Nation's Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners is equally evasive.
But this was not always the case.
The idea of prisons having cells evolved in the 18th century. This had to do with an idea that prisoners should be forced to reflect in solitude on their sins. The space proposed for this borrowed its terminology from the religious monastic cell.
In 1779, the Penitentiary Act specified cells for two national penitentiary houses where prisoners were to be penitent and reform. The cells were to be 'not less than ten feet in length, seven feet in breadth', or a minimum of 6.5 square metres. These 18th century prisons were never built. However, as New Zealand was being colonised in the 1840s, a model prison was constructed in Pentonville, north London. Its cells set a new standard of 8.4 square metres.
Despite this, Invercargill was not the only New Zealand prison built with cells smaller than the Pentonville template. At Waikeria Prison, where poor prison conditions prompted a prison protest in the high security complex in late 2020, the cells central to the problems were only 6 square metres.
Before the riot, the Ombudsman reported that:
'Most cells in the [Waikeria] HSC were double-bunked and conditions were unacceptably cramped for many tāne. […] Cells were in a poor state of repair. They were poorly ventilated and uncomfortably hot. Most cells accommodated two tāne [who …] ate meals on their bunks in close proximity to an uncovered toilet.'
One person living in such a small cell would breach the Council of Europe's minimum standards. These require 6 square metres for a single cell plus any space needed for sanitary facilities, usually meaning 7-8 square metres. When cells are shared, the European minimum is 11-12 square metres.
The lack of a specific minimum cell size in New Zealand can be rationalised because a reasonable cell size depends on how a cell is being used – for example, how many hours a day a prisoner spends in it, the number of prisoners living in it, and other factors, such as the needs of prisoners in wheelchairs. In this way, the qualitative descriptions in the Ombudsman and Inspectorate documents – which use words such as 'comfortable', 'adequate', and 'fit for purpose' – can be justified.
However, the inflexibility of concrete buildings means that cells cannot grow and shrink as circumstances demand. Cells need to operate under conditions they were never built for. In recent years, staff shortages and Covid-19 have meant prisoners have spent more hours locked up in cells designed for sleeping in – not for living in.
Increases in the prison population mean that cells designed for one person are now used to house two prisoners. The justice sector projections, released by the Ministry of Justice, herald a 36 percent increase in the prison population by 2035 because 'new policy settings are expected to see more offenders receive prison sentences and for those sentences to be longer'. This increase will put more pressure on prison accommodation.
Ensuring prisoners spend more time out of their cells should be prioritised, but we also need a legislated minimum cell size because history has taught us that the current silence in this matter can lead to human rights abuses. The minimum size must anticipate the varying circumstances that cells inevitably accommodate.
Work to progress such thinking began 35 years ago when New Zealand and Australia developed Standard Guidelines for Prison Facilities. This world-leading document set a minimum cell size of 8.75 square metres for single cells and 12.75 square metres for double cells.
Building on this is important to achieve the outcomes we all want for prisoners. As former Australian inmate John Killick once observed:
'It's very hard to live with somebody virtually 24 hours a day, day in, day out in a tiny cell which … becomes a bathroom, it becomes a toilet, it becomes a study, it becomes a bedroom, and all in a tiny cell. It's not the way to go if you want to bring people into jail and rehabilitate them.'