There are eighteen adult prisons in New Zealand. Three prisons house female offenders, one each in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The remaining fifteen house male offenders; ten in the North Island and five in the South Island. In addition, there are four youth correctional facilities, termed youth justice residences. The facilities are managed by the Department of Corrections. There are five security levels in New Zealand adult prisons: Minimum, Low, Low-Medium, High and Maximum. In 2018 North & South magazine published a long-form article by Paul Little titled "The Case for Closing Prisons" which included data on New Zealand prison inmate populations. List of prisons Northern Region Northland Region Corrections Facility (Ngawha) Northland Region Corrections Facility is located 5 km northeast of the town of Kaikohe and is colloquially known as Ngawha - after the local area. Maori in Northland tried to persuade the Corrections Department not to upset a local taniwha by building the prison on thermal land. They were unsuccessful and the facility opened in 2005. Following completion, the foundations proved to be unstable. The prison accommodates up to 548 prisoners with security classifications ranging from minimum to high-medium and employs 180 staff. Auckland Prison (Paremoremo) Auckland Prison opened in 1968 and is at Paremoremo, on the northern fringe of Auckland, and thus also known as Paremoremo Prison. It contains New Zealand's only specialist maximum-security prison unit and houses some of the most violent criminals in the country. It has beds for 680 prisoners, and in 2010, about 90 prisoners were classified as maximum security. It has a 60-bed treatment unit for child-sex offenders called Te Piriti and a Special Needs Unit. In November 2011, a Drug Treatment Unit (DTU) was established with clinical staff coming from Odyssey House. The DTU houses up to 48 prisoners and provides an intensive 12-week programme targeted at prisoners serving sentences of between four and twelve months. Mount Eden Corrections Facility History There has been a prison on the Mount Eden site in Auckland since 1856. The first building was made of timber and was known as the Stockade. A new stone building opened in 1865 although the stone wall that surrounds the prison was not finished until the mid-1870s - using prison labour. The old Mount Eden Prison used to hold about 420 prisoners and was squalid, substandard and unsafe. In 2004 the Department acknowledged the prison "falls well-short of the