The challenge of reducing re-offending, as well as the enforcement of compliance, requires the Department to work with a number of partners.
The Justice Sector comprises a core set of agencies - the Ministry of Justice, Department of Corrections, Police, Crown Law Office, and the Ministry of Social Development with respect to youth offenders. We also work closely with many other government agencies, non-government agencies, groups and communities.
At an individual level, Corrections staff often need to work in partnership with an offender’s family or whānau.
Strengthening these partnerships is a key priority for the Department, based on an acknowledgement that we cannot achieve our outcomes on our own.
Health and Corrections interface
Corrections is funded to provide prisoners with primary health services that are reasonably equivalent to those available in the community. All secondary and tertiary health services are the responsibility of the local DHB and prisoners are eligible for these services based on the same eligibility criteria as any other member of the public.
Corrections works with the Ministry of Health to ensure prisoners’ health needs are considered in the development of health sector standards, guidelines and strategies.
Many prisoners have histories of non-involvement with health services while in the community, and enter prison with high levels of health needs. Prisons provide a unique opportunity to identify health needs and provide appropriate treatments, including specialist services. Resolving offenders’ health needs can be an important contribution to their rehabilitation, for example, by improving their prospects for employment.
In a tight labour market the Department faces significant challenges in recruiting and retaining nurses. There are also escalating costs in contracting primary health providers such as general practitioners and dentists. Further, the prisoner population is aging, with an increasing number of elderly prisoners with chronic and/or complex health needs.
Mental health problems are also common amongst prisoners, with up to 20 percent of the prisoner population at any given time requiring some level of mental health care.
Ensuring adequate access to primary and secondary mental health services is therefore critical, as are addiction services and the management of prisoners with personality disorders.
Corrections also have an interest in ensuring that the health needs of offenders are adequately recognised in national frameworks of healthcare delivery.
In the community, key challenges for the Department include ensuring that offenders have access to addiction services (alcohol, drugs, and problem gambling) and mental health care, that barriers to service delivery are resolved, and that the health sector plans appropriately for the high and complex health needs of some offenders.
Community and voluntary sector
The community and voluntary sector is a key service-delivery partner. The Department has nationally-based contractual relationships with the Prisoners’ Aid and Rehabilitation Society and with Prison Fellowship for the delivery of services and programmes.
The Prisoners’ Aid and Rehabilitation Society and the Salvation Army have recently signed contracts to deliver supported accommodation to higher-risk offenders.
At a local level, both Prison Services and Community Probation and Psychological Services have a number of relationships with national and local voluntary and community bodies who provide services, generally of a reintegrative or educational nature.
Over 3,000 community volunteers work in prisons.
Support for victims
Correction’s major contribution to supporting victims is in enforcing the sanctions of the Court by ensuring offenders comply with sentences and orders, and working to reduce future re-offending.
There is also a direct role in administering the Victim Notification System. The Department maintains the details of victims forwarded by the Police in a secure environment within its core electronic business system (IOMS).
Victim notification coordinators at each prison and Community Probation and Psychological Services Area Office use the information to provide notification services to registered victims. The New Zealand Parole Board’s administration support service also accesses the information to fulfil the Board’s notification responsibilities under the Parole Act 2002.
The Department has a growing role with other justice and community agencies in developing restorative justice initiatives, particularly restorative justice conferences in prisons between offenders and their victims. The Department also supports community based initiatives that bring together offenders and victims after sentencing.
Ombudsmen’s role in safe and humane management
The Department has an important relationship with the Office of the Ombudsmen. This agency provides an external review function, complementary to the Department’s own independent internal Inspectorate.
There are two dimensions to this relationship. Firstly, the office provides an independent complaints service to prisoners via a 0800 number, serving as a key “safety valve” for the prison environment. Though most complaints received from prisoners are able to be resolved within the same day, a small number are deemed to require more extensive investigation.
The second dimension is the Ombudsmen’s role in providing an independent, external review of standards of offender management. This role is currently being expanded, and will include the investigation of all deaths in custody and selected serious incidents.
The Ombudsmen also have a role in monitoring New Zealand’s compliance with the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT). This involves on-site inspections at prisons.