The Rehabilitation group was established in the context of the 2007 head office restructure to facilitate the identification and delivery of best practice rehabilitative and reintegrative services and to ensure a seamless approach to the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community.
Rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders is the primary responsibility of Prison Services and Community Probation & Psychological Services. The Rehabilitation group supports Prison Services and Community Probation & Psychological Services in achieving this by identifying and facilitating the integration and delivery of services and programmes that will successfully rehabilitate and reintegrate offenders.
The Rehabilitation group is distributed nationally. In addition to staff at the Department's Head Office in Wellington, both Corrections Inmate Employment (CIE) and Māori Services staff are based in the regions.
The General Manager of the Rehabilitation group is Phil McCarthy.
Māori Services Team
This new team has replaced both the former Treaty Relationships Team, and Prisons Advisors Māori Service Development. The new Māori Services Team has a National Manager and Senior Advisor/Kaumatua based at Head Office. Three regional Māori Relationships managers and advisers, with teams of Area Advisers Māori support Prison Services and Community Probation & Psychological Services in the delivery of services to Māori.
The team has a particular focus on assisting staff and managers to build local relationships with Māori communities and providers to facilitate responsive sentence management and, especially, the rehabilitation and reintegration of Māori offenders into their communities.
Pacific National Adviser
The Pacific National Adviser is responsible for advising the Department on strengthening its relationships with Pacific people - including offenders and their families, Pacific communities and other Government agencies – in order that they work together to achieve better outcomes for all offenders.
Corrections Inmate Employment
Prisoners generally have limited or no work experience before entering prison. Research indicates that prisoners who are engaged in meaningful employment after their release are less likely to re-offend.
Corrections Inmate Employment provides a range of initiatives to improve prisoners’ employment skills, training and formal qualifications whilst they are serving their sentence. Corrections Inmate Employment provides opportunities to prisoners through: prison-based business-like industries, industry training, work parties and the Release to Work programme. It has the primary role in delivering the Prisoner Employment Strategy which aims to have 60 per cent of prisoners active in employment and training by 2010.
In the 2007/08 financial year on average 3,453 prisoners were employed in prison-based work, amounting to 5,859,404 hours over the year.
Industry training through on-the-job and workshop based training allows prisoners to obtain formal qualifications through the New Zealand Qualifications Authority framework – giving them credits or industry certified national certificates.
1,125 prisoners commenced vocational training through Corrections Inmate Employment and Prison Services in the 2007/08 financial year. These prisoners studied toward external qualifications through NZQA. On average each prison achieved 46 credits.
CIE employs around 363 staff; which includes 20 staff located at Corrections’ Head Office in Wellington, 303 CIE Instructors and 10 Site Operations Managers. Staff numbers are increasing as the PES is implemented.
Rehabilitation Development
The Rehabilitation Development team is responsible for overseeing the development, integration and coordination of rehabilitative initiatives delivered to offenders managed by the Department.
This includes: