There's a saying which has perhaps direct relevance to work in the Department at the moment - "when the going gets tough, the tough get going". Every day our 6,000 staff come to work. They do their jobs and do them well, without a great deal of public recognition. This kind of resilience and mental toughness is to be applauded.
Recently I was privileged to meet seven outstanding staff and role models. The winners of the Corrections PRIDE Chief Executive's Awards are talented and exceptional staff. They deserve to be celebrated not just by their colleagues at Corrections, but by all New Zealanders because they are making a real difference to our society. Whether they are working directly with offenders, or in auxilliary roles, these are the people who most exemplify our core values of professionalism, responsiveness, integrity, diversity, and efficiency and effectiveness.
To the PRIDE winners and the numerous Corrections officers who have been awarded with long-service medals recently - thank you for your dedication and your commitment to making New Zealand a better place through your hard work.
Our prisons are filling up. It’s the same the world over, and while we’re managing prisoner numbers here in New Zealand in several ways, the challenges of an increased muster make life harder for everyone.
The new community-based sentences that will be introduced later this year as part of the Effective Interventions initiatives are designed to make a difference to prisoner numbers (though not to overall offender numbers), and the new prisons at Otago and Spring Hill will provide temporary relief when they open, but one of the real issues is our ever-expanding population. It is a sad fact that more people also means more offenders.
The new community-based sentences will mean more responsibility for our probation officers. The role of the probation officer is little understood by many people. It’s interesting to note that some members of the public think paroled offenders are under some type of home detention, curfew or surveillance, when this is simply not the case. A paroled offender who chooses to re-offend and is determined to, will have time and opportunities to do so. This is not due to some failure or fault on the part of the Department, it is the reality of a workable system and the personality and choices of the offender.
I hope the story on page six of this issue of Corrections News will give you a wider appreciation of the role of the probation officer.
To ensure we are as prepared as possible to manage the new community-based sentences and the increasing offender numbers, we have started a round of consultations and workshops to enable staff to inform our strategic planning for the way forward. I encourage all staff to participate in this planning process.
Planning of another kind is well advanced. Our pandemic action plan has reached the practical "exercise" stage and our emergency response teams will be practising at three separate prisons around the country. As with any group of people who live in close proximity to each other, prison populations must be carefully managed to ensure any communicable diseases are quickly identified and contained, and our pandemic planning will ensure we are well-prepared.
Last June we held an inaugural Managers' Conference, which was very successful with a lot of good ideas discussed and new initiatives developed. Another similar conference is being arranged in Wellington on 29 and 30 May. The conference will provide an excellent forum for Corrections managers to discuss current and future issues so we can work towards improving our services and contributing further to reducing re-offending.
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Email commdesk@corrections.govt.nz or phone (04) 460 3365.
ISSN 1178-8453