Delivering public value

We face a challenging economic environment so our commitment is to achieve more with every taxpayer’s dollar, freeing up resources where we can, while improving our service responses.

New Zealand is facing a challenging economic environment. As a large organisation, we have a responsibility to New Zealand to do our best to free up resources without compromising service delivery.

In everything we do, we will strive to deliver the best value to the public of New Zealand.

We will build the public’s confidence that it has a Corrections system that is using taxpayers’ resources wisely to achieve its outcomes. We will ensure that we streamline every activity to focus it on reducing re-offending and improving public safety. We will provide a work environment that supports creating lasting change.

We will modernise service delivery and lift the performance of Prison Services to achieve a recognised world standard.

We will identify smarter, more streamlined ways of working while continuously developing better and more effective and efficient ways of working by removing duplication, and simplifying internal processes and systems.

We will complete a rolling value for money review, led by people both internal and external to the Department, to identify operating efficiencies.

We will build and maintain capital and information infrastructure that supports us to work most effectively with offenders.

Capital and asset management intentions

We manage over $1.8 billion worth of facilities, including 20 prisons and over 140 probation centres across New Zealand. A structured approach to the replacement and commissioning of facilities helps in managing the demand on facilities brought by changing business needs. We will develop facilities which support staff to effectively deliver services and achieve our desired outcomes.

Over the past ten years, growth in the prisoner population has been substantial. Concerted efforts by the Government have slowed the rate of growth in the projected prisoner population. However, the latest Justice Sector Forecast (2010 to 2020) projects an increase in the prisoner population to 9890 by June 2020 (made up of 7905 sentenced prisoners and 1985 remand prisoners), an increase of over 1000 compared to the current prisoner population.

To accommodate this growth, and to replace obsolete capacity, we will need to establish 2000 additional prison beds by 2020.

We will build a new prison at Wiri in South Auckland to house approximately 960 male prisoners
by 2015. It is expected that this new prison will be built as a public-private partnership, where we will contract a private provider to build and then operate the new prison. By allowing a private contractor to design a facility “fit for purpose” for their operating method, we aim to maximise efficiency and effectiveness and reduce re-offending.
There has been a rapid growth too in the community-based offender population over the past ten years, and particularly since the introduction of new forms of community sentences and orders in October 2007. Over the past three years, there has been an increase in the average number of sentences and orders we manage on any day from 30,774 in June 2007 to 45,658 in June 2010.

With an injection of additional Government funding, we increased the number of Community Probation Services staff over the last few years to manage some of the extra demands. We have also made fundamental changes to the ways we manage community-based offenders so we can accommodate the growth of community-based offender volumes without a proportionate increase in staff numbers.

The Canterbury earthquakes have caused some damage to our Community Probation Services Centres in Christchurch. In response we will develop approaches to delivering our services more effectively on the ground, which may mean we redevelop our facilities in ways that are different to how they were in the past.

Over the next three years, we will:

update our Community Probation Service Centre footprint and designs to match our evolving way of working with offenders and where necessary expand service centres

lead the implementation of New Zealand’s first proposed Public Private Partnership for the design, build and operation of a prison in South Auckland

monitor the implementation of the privately managed prison, learn from Serco’s innovative practice and implement, where possible, that practice in our publicly-run prisons.

We will demonstrate our success through:

achieving key performance indicators (as detailed in the contract with Corrections) for Serco’s management of Mount Eden Corrections Facility

delivering the contract with Serco in line with the requirements set out in the contract

minimal resistance by local communities to the expansion of Community Probation Services Centres

awarding the contract for the proposed public private partnership to build and manage the new prison at Wiri.

The table below outlines Corrections’ capital expenditure programme. This capital programme is aimed at assisting Corrections to achieve its operating intentions by ensuring it has the required capacity to meet demand and that its physical assets are maintained.

Information technology

Information technology is vital to all aspects of our work.

It is critical for offender management that our information is reliable, readily accessible, and secure. Corrections is implementing many major organisational changes and we will ensure that our information systems support these changes and make it easier for us to work with offenders well.

Over the next three years, we will:

• provide new IT capability to support organisational changes, including changes to the Integrated Offender Management System to give staff a workflow design that supports their work
• increase the flexibility of probation officers to work as mobile operators using laptops and other mobile technologies
• maximise our ability to use new technologies to track and manage high risk offenders
• use technology more effectively to ensure offenders are meeting their sentence and order obligations
• improve the robustness of the information technology infrastructure by providing greater diversity and disaster recovery services
• utilise outsourcing to deliver innovations and cost advantages
• work across the justice sector on IT initiatives
• better use information sourced from across the justice sector.

We will demonstrate our success through:

• front-line staff spending more time with offenders
• fewer events that disrupt information technology services
• delivering organisational change projects faster
• providing more modern, user-oriented services on internet-based technologies.