Legal visits and New Zealand Parole Board hearings will continue to be facilitated by AVL during Alert Level 3, the National Commissioner for Corrections has announced.

A “very limited” number of staff will work from sites in order to help with carrying out essential tasks, which will aid in providing AVL access points to NZPB members, staff and lawyers.

Court reports and advice and support to the judiciary continues whilst community work remains temporarily suspended.

Statutory visits (e.g. the independent Corrections Inspectorate and the Office of the Ombudsman) can still be facilitated.

Guided and temporary release of prisoners (for example, reintegration activities outside prison), temporary removal, release to work activities, face-to-face rehabilitation programmes and non-essential prison industries will remain temporarily suspended.

All Community Corrections sites will remain closed, with people serving community-based sentences and orders reporting to probation staff by phone.

Per Corrections’ current process, all electronic monitoring of offenders in the community will continue as usual, including the installation or removal of monitoring equipment.