What Corrections does
The Department of Corrections exists primarily to administer the sentences and orders of the criminal Courts. The Department also provides information, reports and support to the Judiciary to assist with sentencing, and to the New Zealand Parole Board to assist with parole decisions.
As part of the wider justice sector, the Department contributes to the sector’s overall outcome of a “Safe and Just Society”, through three intermediate outcomes, “Upholding the Integrity of Sentences and Orders”, “Reducing Re-offending”, and “Offenders Managed Safely and Humanely”.
The Department’s vision statement, expressed in its 2008–2013 Strategic Business Plan, is: Improving public safety by ensuring sentence compliance and reducing re-offending, through capable staff and effective partnerships.
Underlying this is the commitment “to succeed overall, we must succeed for Māori offenders”.
The Department manages offenders through an integrated approach that applies across all sentences and order types (see Figure 1 below). This process starts at the pre-sentence stage when probation officers assess offenders’ individual risks and needs. The assessment forms the basis of advice to the Judiciary on appropriate sentencing options. Once sentenced, the Department’s core responsibility of ensuring compliance with the sentences and orders of the Courts and Parole Board contributes to improved public safety through the incapacitation of the offender.
Assessment information also ensures that, once sentenced, the individual is managed safely, securely and fairly and, as far as possible, given opportunity to participate in rehabilitative activities. This includes supports necessary to reintegrate to society.
Rehabilitation programmes are targeted towards prisoners who are willing to address the factors that led to their offending.
Those assessed with a moderate risk of re-offending may be eligible for medium-intensity programmes. Prisoners who are higher-risk may qualify for a high-intensity programme at one of the Department's six special treatment units (one currently being developed). Youth prisoners (generally 17–18 year olds) may qualify for a programme run in a Youth Unit. Research evidence confirms that the greatest impacts are achieved through such targeting. Special focus units in prison deliver rehabilitative programmes to selected prisoners. These include drug and alcohol treatment, culturally-focused interventions (for Māori and Pacific offenders), and faith-based programmes.
Education and employment opportunities are also made available to many prisoners.
Reintegration support is directed towards those leaving prison, to help ensure basic needs are met (accommodation, employment, social support, etc). Efforts are made to promote contact with family/whānau, and to more generally support reintegrative success. A policy of housing prisoners in facilities close to their home region supports this goal. We also work with offenders in the community to address similar needs in order to reduce their risks of re-offending.
Figure 1: Offender Management Process
Offenders managed in the community are similarly assisted to engage in rehabilitative activity. However, some sentences, such as Community Work, serve purposes related to community reparation, and do not involve referral to rehabilitative programmes.
Offenders completing Community Work sentences generate more than a million hours of free labour to community groups and charitable organisations.
Community Probation and Psychological Services also work closely with other agencies when offenders have been released from prison. This commonly includes collaboration with Police in the management of high-risk offenders such as child sex offenders.
Key facts
• Corrections is one of the larger government departments, with over 7,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff positions (as at October 2008). Those positions are filled by approximately 7,600 employees in the following groups:
• Corrections workforce is considerably more ethnically diverse than the general public service, which is of value in working with offenders. Around 22 percent of the staff are Māori, and 9 percent are Pacific.
• Over 93 percent of Corrections staff work from almost 180 locations throughout the country, with the remainder based in the Wellington head office.
• Corrections managed approximately 85,000 non-custodial sentences and orders in the community over the course of last year, including over 55,600 new starts. Last year, 47 percent of all sentences and orders in the community were served by offenders of Māori ethnicity.
• The community offender population serve either community sentences (Home Detention, Community Detention, Intensive Supervision, Supervision, Community Work) or orders (Parole, Parole with residential restrictions, Release on Conditions, Extended Supervision, Residential Orders). Offenders may be serving more than one sentence or order at the same time - currently, around 35,000 offenders are serving more than 40,000 sentences and orders.
• A core role of Community Probation and Psychological Services is provision of information to Courts and New Zealand Parole Board, which includes pre-sentence reports, pre-release plans, and specialist risk assessments. Around 36,000 reports are prepared annually for the Judiciary to assist with sentencing, and over 70,000 hours of staff support is provided to the Courts. The Department also provides around 5,000 Parole Board reports to inform parole decisions.
• The prison population is made up of sentenced prisoners (approximately 80% of the total) and prisoners remanded in custody prior to conviction or sentencing (20%). Currently around 8,000 people are held in prisons, an increase of 50 percent over the total number in prison ten years ago. Much of this growth has been in custody remand. A peak population of 8,457 was recorded in September 2007. Māori make up 50 percent of the total prisoner population.
• The Department manages 20 prisons: 17 men’s prisons and three women’s prisons. Women number about 450 or 6 percent of the total prison population. There were 21,000 individual prisoner receptions during the year, the majority under custody remand orders.
• The majority of sentenced prisoners (85%) received each year serve less than 12 months in prison. The average period spent on remand is around 60 days.
• The average cost of keeping an offender in prison is currently $90,746 per year, which is lower than that of comparable countries, despite including depreciation which is not costed in many countries. The average annual cost of managing an offender on a community sentence is $3665, ranging from $2,000 for community work to $25,000 for Home Detention.
• New Zealand compares favourably with other, similar jurisdictions internationally in rates of prison escapes, prisoner drug use, prisoner assaults and self-harm, and in community sentence compliance.
Financial summary
Corrections operate a balance sheet totalling over $1.9 billion, including $1.7 billion of physical assets. Estimated total revenue for the 2008/09 financial year is made up of:
Estimated total expenditure for the 2008/09 financial year is $965m, allocated as follows: