You can email someone in a New Zealand prison. They just cannot email you back.

I am calling on the New Zealand Government and the Department of Corrections to introduce a secure, monitored Email to Email system between prisoners and their approved contacts.

This is not a request for unrestricted internet access or social media. It is a request to modernise a communication system that already partly exists.

How it could work

✔ Approved family and friends send emails through a secure system.

✔ All messages are screened and monitored by Corrections.

✔ Prisoners receive printed copies of approved emails.

✔ Prisoners write their replies by hand.

✔ Corrections scans and securely emails the approved replies back.

Simple. Secure. Monitored. Traceable.

Why this matters

Families can wait days or weeks for letters. Phone calls can be missed, prisons can go into lockdown and ordinary mail can be delayed. This particularly affects children, elderly parents, people with disabilities, overseas whānau and families working shifts.

A prison sentence should not remove every opportunity for safe and meaningful family contact. Maintaining healthy relationships supports wellbeing, reduces isolation and gives prisoners something meaningful to return to.

New Zealand already allows approved contacts to email prisoners. Corrections screens, prints and delivers those emails, but handwritten replies must still be sent through ordinary post. Securely scanning and emailing approved replies would complete the communication process.

Controlled prisoner communication systems already operate overseas, including Australia’s eMates model. New Zealand should investigate a secure system suited to its own prisons, security requirements and whānau.

What I am asking for

I am asking Corrections to establish a two year pilot programme in selected North Island prisons. The pilot should be:

🔒 Secure and monitored

👥 Limited to approved contacts

✍️ Based on handwritten prisoner replies

📧 Delivered through a secure electronic system

💰 Assessed for an affordable user pays option

📊 Independently evaluated for security, cost, family connection and operational outcomes

If the pilot is successful, the system should be introduced across New Zealand prisons.

Corrections does not need to remove security controls or give prisoners unrestricted internet access. It simply needs to provide a safe, timely and properly monitored way for prisoners and their approved contacts to communicate in both directions.

Please sign and share this petition. Families of prisoners are too often unheard, and visible public support is needed to take this proposal to the people responsible for prison policy.

New Zealand already has prisoner email. Let’s make it two way.

One email can mean everything to a family waiting on the other side of the prison wall.