Tena ra koutou katoa,
New legislation designed to strengthen community sentences takes effect from 1 October.
Amendments to the Sentencing and Parole Acts create new sentences of community detention and intensive supervision, and bring changes to existing sentences of community work and supervision.
Home detention changes from being a way of serving a prison term to a stand-alone community sentence. Significant for M䯲i is an emphasis on enabling greater involvement from wh䮡u so they are working with probation officers to help offenders complete their sentences successfully.
CPPS has created a new role of Kaiwhakahaere – a communitybased liaison person whose job it will be to work towards bridging the cultural divide that sometimes occurs when probation officers are working with M䯲i offenders and their wh䮡u.
Kaiwhakahaere are being seconded in CPPS areas around the country to work closely with wh䮡u to ensure they know what they need to do to support someone serving a sentence in the community. They’ll also help probation officers develop and enhance their cultural understanding and knowledge to make their efforts with M䯲i more effective.
Changes to community work will see some offenders given the chance to spend some of their community work hours in basic work and living skills training programmes (BWLS). If an offender completes their training satisfactorily, they may have a set number of training hours counted against their community work sentence.
Among the programmes available will be Tikanga M䯲i Programmes, which use M䯲i identity and values and have proven very effective in helping to motivate offenders to address their offending. Through BWLS, it’s expected more M䯲i offenders will have access to such programmes.
These changes offer an opportunity to make a real difference and I hope we will have your full support in encouraging eligible offenders to take up this option.
Noho ora mai koutou katoa
Lawrence Tawera
National Adviser M䯲i Service Development
Community Probation & Psychological Services