12 June
New prison release teams have been established to meet the extra needs and responsibilities associated with released prisoners.
Corrections Chief Executive Barry Matthews said every Community Probation and Psychological Services (CPPS) service centre in New Zealand will have probation officers assigned to the management of offenders released from prison. In larger CPPS offices these staff will be organised into dedicated prison release teams.
Mr Matthews said the staff involved would be especially trained to manage all activities, sentences and orders relating to offenders who are released from prison and would concentrate solely on the needs of these offenders.
“Offenders who are released from prison present special challenges to probation officers and require a more intensive management approach than offenders serving a sentence wholly in the community.
“These teams will improve the standard of management and boost the level of knowledge
about the operational requirements for this group of offenders and ensure they are better held to account when they do not comply with the requirements of their sentences.”
Mr Matthews said the introduction of prison release teams was one of a range of initiatives underway to improve the performance of CPPS.
“The way a probation officer’s work is organised is also being changed. This will result in a move away from having probation officers manage all sentence types, towards developing a level of specialisation through managing a defined combination of sentence types.
Mr Matthews said further initiatives were planned to help the work of probation officers, including simplifying complex procedures and providing added levels of oversight.
“It’s important we continue to support all methods and procedures that increase our level of organisation and which lead to improvements in our performance as a service.”
For further information contact the Communications Services Desk:
Copyright © Department of Corrections | Feedback and queries email: webmaster@corrections.govt.nz