A victim support group says more needs to be done to make sure criminals released from prison can never re-offend.
A convicted rapist was released from prison last month and placed in accommodation near two schools in the south Auckland suburb of Mangere, raising concerns for children's safety.
In a newsletter to parents, the school highlighted the rehousing and said it had spoken to the Department of Corrections about the man's monitoring.
Corrections has assured the school the man will be "very closely supervised" and "will be visited frequently by probation staff and police". It says it has contacted five other local school principals and surrounding neighbours.
Founder of the Sensible Sentencing Trust Garth McVicar says if community safety is going to be paramount then they have a number of options.
"Realistically these hardcore recidivist offenders should not be put back in the community. So we've got two options: we can keep them in prison, or we can set-up a completely separate institution for recidivist offenders."
Mr McVicar says it's one of the worst decisions he's seen.
"We've got a liberal ideology in this country that seems to work on the assumption that everybody can be rehabilitated. They don't accept the fact that these people are un-rehabilitatable [sic]. Until they do, then we're going to get repeats of this type of thing."
Mr McVicar says it's unfair on the community and parents shouldn't have to be worried about their children.
"Absolutely diabolical, this is one of the most insensible decisions that we've seen for a long, long time...it just keeps on happening."
The offender was only released from prison after the department unsuccessfully applied for a Public Protection Order from the High Court, which would have required him to live at a secure facility on prison grounds.
Newshub.
