Introducing the National Advisory Group on Special Conditions
This is a sample post published to demonstrate the Bond Blog layout. It will be replaced or edited before launch.
Bond Trust has established two national workstreams. The first is the National Advisory Group on Special Conditions, or NAGSC. The second is the Media and Public Narrative Group. This update covers NAGSC: what it is, why special conditions warrant a national conversation, and what the group is setting out to do.
What is the National Advisory Group on Special Conditions?
NAGSC is a multidisciplinary group convened by Bond Trust to support clearer, more consistent and evidence-based use of special parole conditions across Aotearoa. It is an advisory and guidance-building body rather than a decision-making one: it does not sit in individual cases, and it does not replace any statutory role. Its purpose is to strengthen the shared understanding that practitioners and agencies draw on when conditions are proposed, imposed and managed.
Why do special conditions need a national group?
Insights from our Te Ara Oranga seminars and from wider sector engagement have pointed repeatedly at the same set of pressures: inconsistent use of special conditions, expectations that are unclear to the person expected to meet them, fragmented communication between agencies, and practice that varies from region to region. Each of these adds stress and risk that nobody set out to create. When a condition is ambiguous, compliance becomes a guessing exercise, and the consequences of guessing wrong fall on the person on parole and, ultimately, on community safety.
Who is in the group?
NAGSC deliberately brings together perspectives that do not always sit at the same table. Its membership draws on psychology and rehabilitation, law and parole practice, cultural and kaupapa Māori expertise, lived experience, frontline reintegration providers, and academic and research partners. Including lived experience alongside clinical and legal expertise is a design choice, not a courtesy: the people who have had to live inside a set of conditions can describe how those conditions actually function in daily life.
What will NAGSC actually work on?
The group's initial focus areas are:
- developing national guidance and principles for the use of special conditions
- strengthening cultural and survivor-informed practice
- improving clarity and consistency for practitioners
- reducing unnecessary variation across regions
- supporting safer and more transparent decision-making
Taken together, the aim is that special conditions are used in ways that are proportionate, effective, and grounded in dignity and community safety.
How does this fit with Bond Trust's other work?
Bond Trust was formed in 2014 by a small group with more than a century of combined experience walking alongside people preparing for release, and our roots lie in the Circles of Support and Accountability model. Since the 2024 Memorandum of Collaboration with the Fellowship Support Network, most direct person-centred support is coordinated by FSN. That partnership is what allows Bond to concentrate on the wider ecosystem: sector capability, collaboration, evidence-informed practice and public understanding. NAGSC is that focus applied to one specific and consequential part of the system.
How does this connect to Te Ara Oranga?
Te Ara Oranga, held in 2025 and again as Te Ara Oranga 2.0 in 2026, brought practitioners, researchers, statutory partners, lived-experience leaders and community organisations together to share insights and strengthen collaboration. Those gatherings surfaced system gaps as well as good practice. NAGSC is one of the workstreams that came out of taking those conversations seriously enough to build something durable from them.
How can practitioners and partners get involved?
The group's work will be shared through this blog and through future seminars and hui as guidance develops. Practitioners, agencies, researchers and community organisations with an interest in special conditions are welcome to make contact, whether to contribute expertise, to raise a pattern you are seeing in your region, or simply to follow the work as it progresses.
For the evidence base behind this initiative, see what the evidence tells us about safer reintegration. More about Bond Trust's wider mahi is available on our home page.
Learn more about NAGSC and our other national workstreams on our Initiatives page, or read about the wider picture in Our Mission.