Most of New Zealand’s largest government agencies can’t say how many former prisoners they employ, including the Ministry of Justice and police.
Documents, released to Newstalk ZB through the Official Information Act from 10 government ministries and departments, revealed only two kept track ofthe number of formerly incarcerated employees on their payrolls.
The Ministry of Justice said it “does not keep a record of employees or suppliers’ personnel or subcontractors that have been imprisoned”, while New Zealand Police said it “does not record information pertaining to criminal convictions of employees or non-employees”.
The Ministry of Education (MoE), the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE), Inland Revenue, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), Oranga Tamariki (OT) and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) also had no centralised record.
The Department of Internal Affairs hadn’t employed any ex-inmates since June 2022, but didn’t keep records from before then.
The Department of Corrections said it didn’t hire staff that had previously been sentenced to imprisonment – the only agency that outright refuses to employ anyone who’d been incarcerated.
MBIE and the MSD were clear anyone incarcerated was unlikely to secure a job with them.
Oranga Tamariki says "there may be a legitimate reason" to employ people who've been incarcerated. Photo / RNZ, Angus Dreaver
New Zealand Police said their system was “based more on the conviction rather than the sentence”, which meant applicants with convictions relating to things like violence and sexual crimes wouldn’t pass the initial background check.
Others, like MPI and OT, said a criminal conviction wasn’t necessarily a barrier to employing someone.
“In specific circumstances, there may be a legitimate reason to engage the services of an individual or individuals who have previously been incarcerated but have subsequently been able to turn their lives around,” OT said.
The inconsistency of policies across the public sector was leading to heartache for some companies trying to help former prisoners into white-collar professions.
Cameron Smith – the chief executive of Take2, a non-profit teaching web development to people who’ve been through the justice system – said it left a lot of room for recruiters to insert their stigma and bias.
“If you had two equally talented and skilled individuals, one with a criminal history and one without – 99 times out of 100 a potential employer will take the one who doesn’t have a criminal record,” Smith said.
Cameron Smith, founder of Take2, says inconsistent government policy makes it hard to get former prisoners working in the public sector. Photo / Alex Burton
Karl Wright – the former CIO and CISO of IT company Datacom, which has previously taken some Take2 graduates under its wing – said it had numerous contracts with government agencies which the former prisoners couldn’t work on, out of uncertainty about agencies’ polices.
“At the moment, I think what is and isn’t acceptable is determined largely by how the recipient feels about it rather than a policy or process per se,” he said.
Wright said he had never seen an agency clearly lay out what was and wasn’t acceptable, and it was a shame the department were so risk-averse, considering what former prisoners could offer the public sector.
“There is nothing more empathetic than the lived experience. These folks bring a level of experience which probably isn’t available to most government departments.”
The Public Service Commission said in a statement it was up to each agency to manage any risk throughout its recruitment and there was no requirement to centrally record the number of former prisoners it employed.
“Information of this nature would likely be kept in individual employment files and managed on a case-by-case basis, which is appropriate.”
It said there already existed a consistent recruitment framework called the NZSIS Protectice Security Requirements.
These requirements take a recruiter through the criminal record check process and gives advice for managing concerning behaviour and security risks – but doesn’t create a distinction between which convictions or sentences are acceptable for someone in the public sector to have on their record.
Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell has been approached for comment.
Jordan Dunn is a multimedia reporter based in Auckland with a focus on crime, social issues, policing and local issues. He joined Newstalk ZB in 2024 from Radio New Zealand, where he started as an intern out of the New Zealand Broadcasting School.
