Leadership

Using our unique insights into offending behaviour, we must lead across the public service and within the community sector, a programme of change that achieves our goals and those of the communities we serve.

To improve public safety and reduce re-offending we will provide an organisational environment, culture and workforce that is closely aligned and equipped to deliver our outcomes and maximise value for money. Most importantly we all need to lead the creation of lasting change.

Every day our staff work with New Zealand’s most difficult and demanding citizens in both institutional and community-based settings. We have unique insights into the offenders we work with and the patterns of behaviour that require changes in order to create offending-free futures. We must use this knowledge to lead across the public service and within the community sector an effective programme of change that achieves our goals and those of the communities we serve.

Our people

We will continue to develop:

motivated and capable staff
strong leaders
a workplace culture, environment and systems that support our work.

Over the next three years, we will embed our culture into all aspects of our people management systems to ensure Corrections’ staff are accountable, make a difference, achieve more by working together, and take new approaches to get better outcomes.

We are developing better collective professionalism and accountability and building confidence in working with Maori to be more effective in reducing Maori re-offending. Supporting staff in their jobs, fostering transparent and clear communication, and promoting collaboration to achieve outcomes are fundamental themes underpinning our workplace culture.

We will prioritise the professional development and safety of our frontline staff so that they can work effectively to create lasting change in offenders’ lives. We will identify those staff who are emerging leaders and fast track their development.

To reflect the professionalism of our staff, we will provide newly-designed uniforms to our front-line prison staff over the next year.

To develop our staff we will:

establish a workforce engagement strategy to improve performance
sponsor an emerging leaders group each year whose development will be fast tracked
promote a refreshed Code of Conduct to strengthen integrity and focus our people on what matters
equip all our frontline staff to be agents of change for offenders
introduce new initiatives aimed at ensuring the health and safety of our people
manage the development of all Corrections staff in a more coordinated manner, based on shared initiatives and partnerships with the wider state sector where appropriate.

All these initiatives will be driven towards developing a workforce that is even more capable of reducing re-offending and improving public safety.

We will demonstrate our success through:

improved measures of culture and staff engagement through annual surveys and local action.

A performance culture

We will strengthen a performance culture within Corrections, where the expectation is that everyone strives to achieve the highest level of success in their work with offenders. We will be courageous in our plans, bold in our goals, and confident in our approach.

To support this focus on performance we will:

create a performance culture that provides transparency in our efforts, reporting against our bottom-line mandatory expectations and focusing on our performance in reducing re-offending
benchmark our prisons’ performance against the delivery of services by our contracted partner Serco at Mount Eden Corrections Facility
ask every leader and manager to match their performance against our highest achievers, learn from them, and lead their teams to the same level of success.

Our partners
Strengthening partnerships is essential for Corrections and the justice sector, because the task of improving public safety and reducing re-offending is a societal challenge.

Corrections will lead efforts to reduce re-offending. Often actions that impact on reducing re-offending lie outside of Corrections’ traditional domain. We must bring together our partners who work outside our organisational confines and work with them to set mutual goals, share capability and deliver actions.

We must work closely with our communities – with iwi, hapu and whanau, non-governmental organisations, community service providers, volunteers and the wider public sector, particularly the health, education and social sectors.

Of particular importance are our partnerships with Maori. To succeed overall, we must succeed with Mäori offenders. Corrections is expanding its partnerships with Maori community groups and agencies to assist in the rehabilitation and reintegration of Maori offenders. These complement existing programmes and support provided in prisons and in the community.

For example, Te Kauhanga Nui a Iwi, a Whangarei-based trust, works with Community Probation Services’ staff to provide emergency housing, advocacy, crisis counselling, budgeting and whänau support services for Maori offenders. The two Whare Oranga Ake (residential reintegrative units) at the Spring Hill Corrections Facility and Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison sites which are due to open in July 2011, will focus on gaining employment (or undertaking training/education), securing suitable accommodation, and improving family and wider social relationships.

Corrections is a key part of the justice sector. It works collaboratively with other agencies in the sector, notably the Ministry of Justice, Police and the Ministry of Social Development. Shared justice sector outcomes underpin a shared planning and budget process that informs Ministers when making policy and funding decisions. A shared approach means we can assess the flow on impacts of initiatives implemented in one part of the sector on other parts of the sector.

Corrections also shares ideas and expertise with international partners, and has strong ongoing relationships with Australian jurisdictions and other like-minded countries.

A key focus for justice sector collaboration at present is the Drivers of Crime project, which Cabinet has endorsed as a whole-of-government policy priority. Priority areas for action include early parenting support services for those most at-risk, behavioural programmes for at-risk children and young people, reducing harm from alcohol, and better responses to low-level offenders.

We will partner with private providers to inject innovation and effectiveness into our work. Key among these are the relationships we are establishing with Serco for the management of Mount Eden Corrections Facility and the proposed relationship that will be formed with the consortium building and managing the new prison at Wiri, South Auckland. Other partnerships for the delivery of key services are our relationships with Spotless for facilities management, with Gen-i for telecommunications and IT infrastructure management, a consortium of Optimation, HCL and the Resultex Group for application development, maintenance and support, with First Security for prisoner escorts and transportation and with G4S for electronic monitoring of offenders.

Over the next three years we will:

select the preferred bidder for the proposed public private partnership for the new prison at Wiri
manage the contract well with Serco for the management of Mt Eden Corrections Facility, incorporating innovations introduce by Serco into the wider prison system
work alongside the wider community, whanau, hapu and iwi in helping prisoners to live an offence-free lifestyle by implementing Whare Oranga Ake at Spring Hill Corrections Facility and Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison
work with District Health Boards and the Ministry of Health to achieve local solutions to enhance community drug and alcohol treatment provided to offenders
implement the Mental Health Screening tool alongside regional forensic mental health services
seek opportunities to more actively engage the services of agencies and non-government organisations in the delivery of community work
work with the Ministry of Education to increase opportunities for prisoners to learn
work with Police to prevent and deter incidents of family violence by community-based offenders occurring at high risk times
improve information sharing with the Child Youth and Family service, integrating our efforts to reduce offending among young people.

We will demonstrate our success through:

our contracted partners delivering against the Key Performance Indicators in their contracts with Corrections
more offenders receiving community based drug and alcohol treatment.