Community Probation & Psychological Services

Community Probation & Psychological Services staff manage approximately 85,000 community-based sentences and orders per year, and provide information and reports to judges and the New Zealand Parole Board to help in making sentencing and release decisions.

Staff also deliver interventions to offenders and prisoners to address their offending behaviour and prepare them for rejoining society.

Community Probation & Psychological Services (CPPS) employs about 2300 staff who work in more than 120 locations nationwide. The General Manager of Community Probation & Psychological Services is Katrina Casey.

In the 2008-2009 financial year:

• Corrections managed 66,635 new community-based sentences and orders.
   
• The average cost per offender on a community-based sentence was $9.92 per day or $3622 per year.
   
• Offenders serving Community Work sentences completed almost 3.3 million hours of work in total.
   
• Probation officers and psychologists completed 44,596 pre-sentence and oral reports and 108 psychological reports for courts.

As part of the Way Forward programme CPPS rehabilitation functions will transfer to the Rehabilitation and Reintegration Services when it has its organisational structure in place.  Every attempt is being made for the transfer to occur prior to the 2010/2011 financial year. 

These activities will include psychological services, positions associated with delivery of the Department's suite of rehabilitation programmes, and also positions associated with rehabilitation currently located in the community probation head office.

Probation officers
CPPS employs around 739 probation officers around the country who manage offenders serving sentences or orders in the community. They also provide information to the Courts and the New Zealand Parole Board to help with their decision making about offenders.

In the 2007/08 financial year probation officers prepared:

• 36,567 written and oral reports on offenders to courts
• 5,316 parole assessment reports for the New Zealand Parole Board
• 413 home leave reports.

Psychologists
CPPS has around 102 psychologists across 17 sites that provide specialist clinical treatment and assessment advice for offenders and training and education for Corrections staff and community groups.

In the 2007/08 financial year they prepared more than 3,000 reports for Prison Services, Community Probation & Psychological Services, the New Zealand Parole Board, and to Courts for sentencing judges.

The service also supports Corrections’ initiatives to reduce re-offending by assisting with the design, implementation, and monitoring of rehabilitation programmes and with a programme of approved research.

Community Work staff
CPPS has approximately 290 Community Work Supervisors who manage offenders serving community work sentences. They organise projects and equipment, supervise offender work parties, and provide positive role models for offenders.

Senior Community Work Supervisors manage day-to-day operations in community work centres, lead teams of community work supervisiors, and manage relationships with community agencies and project sponsors. They also monitor offenders under electronically monitored curfews on community detention sentences.

Programme Facilitators
CPPS has approximately 80 facilitators in seven locations. Programme Facilitators and support staff manage and deliver programmes to offenders in the community and in prison. The programmes they deliver aim to motivate offenders, teach thinking and behavioural skills, and help offenders focus on what needs to change.

Kaiwhakahaere
Kaiwhakahaere is a new role being set up in CPPS in each of its 12 areas with staff being seconded to the role. They will work to help Probation Officers establish effective relationships with Maori offenders and their whanau to enhance sentence compliance and enable Probation Officers to work in a culturally-sensitive way.