Corrections recruitment campaign going well

WELLINGTON: A recruitment campaign is producing results for the Corrections Department and 1500 new officers have enlisted since 2016.

There are still 60 vacancies around the country, but the chief custodial officer, Neal Beales, is confident those gaps can also be filled.

He said as well as those vacancies there were about 170 officers who were not working this month for a variety of reasons, including illness, injury and suspensions.

Mr Beales said the 28 suspended officers were not guilty of doing anything wrong, but when a serious allegation is made it had to be fully investigated and staff are on paid leave during that process.

‘‘If there is a serious allegation of assault or corruption or external police charges that have nothing to do with the actual job, but it’s something that’s happened in their outside life, then we have to take a view on their safety within a custodial environment.

‘‘We have to make sure we’re following due process and working with our HR policies.’’

Mr Beales said while some jails were operating with less than 100% staffing, that did not endanger the officers working there.

‘‘We operate a policy that is part of our collective agreement, which dictates the number of staff required to be present when we’re unlocking prisoners.

‘‘We’ll never ever be in a situation where we are asking staff to unlock a unit without the optimal number of staff to do that. We don’t let staff work on units with only two when there should be three and we don’t let staff unlock units when they’re short of staff.’’

Mr Beales said the New Zealand Corrections Department is also the only governmentrun prison system in the world which utilises a fatigue system — a tool that tells when a member of staff has worked excessive hours or is approaching that point.

He said the current recruitment campaign has been immensely successful and 1400 had signed up to watch last night’s online question and answer session, in which potential recruits could talk to current prison officers about their work.

Mr Beales said the new recruits are also staying longer with the department than ever before and the department is now doing more for staff in terms of safety.

‘‘Stabresistant body armour, onbody cameras, pepper spray, extended length of time staff undergo training.

‘‘We have introduced site emergency response teams and a range of other things.

‘‘Yes it’s a tough job . . . We deal with difficult and often dangerous individuals, but we need really, really good people to step up and be counted and come and join us.’’— RNZ