Probe into cash-for-hours claim

Authorities are investigating an allegation of corruption in which a Corrections Department staff member allowed criminals to buy their way out of serving community work sentences.

Police and the Corrections Department launched investigations following a complaint in September that a community work supervisor was offering to write off sentences for a fee. A person who claims to have been made a cash-for-hours offer said the supervisor would deduct time at a rate of $10 an hour.

Corrections Department records would be altered to make it look as though the time had been served.

Waitemata area manager Alastair Riach said the service called in police and did an audit of its own records, which turned up numerous irregularities.

Mr Riach said he believed the allegations and irregularities were isolated to one former staff member.

"The audit completed a number of checks and any changes that need to be made are currently being [done] to correct the records."

Checks of the records of the large number of those supervised by the former staff member were continuing but had already uncovered a lot of "mistakes" in the records.

"There are two possible outcomes. The police are following up and they may be able to prove that fraud had taken place, or one possibility is the guy just made a lot of mistakes. It can be difficult for us when people allege things because they are often offenders themselves who may have another agenda. But we are taking it seriously."

Mr Riach said there were ways of cross-checking whether someone attended community work (formerly called periodic detention).

Takapuna CIB is investigating.

Police spokesman Jayson Rhodes said the investigation was expected to be lengthy.

Police are understood to have compiled a list of periodic detainees who were supervised by the man.

The man, who has not been interviewed by investigators, was a temporary full-time staff member for several months before resigning last year.

Mr Riach said it was the first corruption allegation he was aware of in his 14 years in the service.

His area, which covers North Shore, Rodney and West Auckland, organises 160,000 hours of community work a year.