26 August
The Department of Corrections is looking to promote its work and career opportunities at the 8th biennial Māori Expo at Auckland’s Vector Arena on 27 August.
Community Probation & Psychological Services (CPPS) Northern Region will be exhibiting at the Expo, with the aim of giving the Department a public presence and promoting recruitment opportunities for graduates across CPPS, Prison Services, and Corrections Inmate Employment nationwide.
Corrections’ event co-ordinator Coral Harris says Corrections places a strong emphasis on providing suitable services for Māori.
“Around 4,000 Māori are currently in our prisons, and Māori are also over-represented in community sentences. This means that to succeed overall, we need to succeed for Māori. To this end, as well as trying to do our day-to-day work in ways that are appropriate for Māori, we also run numerous specialist Māori programmes and Māori Focus Units.”
Coral says they’re constantly on the lookout for confident and ambitious people to join Corrections, especially those with a special affinity for Māori and New Zealand culture, and the Māori Expo is an ideal place to find candidates.
“We run tikanga programmes to help offenders re-connect with their whakapapa and the Māori way of doing things. We employ whanau liaison officers to help facilitate processes where the entire family of an offender is concerned with helping them avoid re-offending.”
Quick facts about the 2007 event:
-Over 30,000 people attended
-40 stage acts
-70 per cent of participants are aged 30 and under
-For more information about the Maori Expo, visit www.maoriexpo.co.nz
Notes to the media
The role of Community Probation and Psychological Services (CPPS)
Community Probation & Psychological Services staff manage approximately 85,000 community-based sentences and orders per year, and provide information and reports to judges and the New Zealand Parole Board to help in making sentencing and release decisions.
Staff also deliver interventions to offenders and prisoners to address their offending behaviour and prepare them for rejoining society.
Community Probation & Psychological Services (CPPS) employs about 2300 staff who work in more than 120 locations nationwide.
The role of Prison Services (PS)
Prison Services operates the Department's 20 prisons.
It provides the secure, safe and humane containment of prisoners while also working to reduce re-offending. The service is responsible for managing the sentence needs of each offender including rehabilitation and preparation for reintegration into the community upon release from prison.
Prison Services employs around 4,055 staff across New Zealand, including around 3,262 Corrections Officers and 164 nurses.
The role of Corrections Inmate Employment (CIE)
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. 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.
CIE employs around 363 staff; which includes 20 staff located at Corrections’ Head Office in Wellington, 303 CIE Instructors and 10 Site Operations Managers.
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