The Department's outcomes explain what we aspire to achieve for society. All the work we do aligns to these outcomes.
The outcomes of the Department, and how they fit into the wider justice sector, are illustrated in the following diagram.
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The Department has developed performance indicators for the outcomes to assess the impact our work has on society. The indicators will help us figure out when we need to change what we do to better achieve our outcomes. They will also help us to prioritise those outcomes to help us to be more effective. The outcomes we are prioritising in this plan are Ensuring Sentence Compliance and Reducing Re-offending.
Strategic environment for the Department
The key environmental trends affecting the Department are:
- continued growth in the offender population, especially amongst young Māori and Pacific population groups, though with Effective Interventions, the prison population has stabilised in 2008
- continued growth in the rate of violent crime, especially amongst young offenders, despite overall crime rates reducing over the past eight years
- crime and justice issues remaining a key concern for the public
- pressure on the justice sector to work together to reduce offending
- ongoing changes to community-based sentences and the management of community-based offenders and those on parole which has significant impacts on both the volume and type of work the Department does
- a tighter fiscal environment within the Public Sector
- a tighter labour market, where it is difficult to recruit and retain skilled staff.
