By HAROLD KOI
Fiji Times - Monday, October 13, 2008 
Methodist minister Reverend Manasa Lasaro listening to Commissioner of Prisons Ioane Naivalurua at the joint church service at Naboro Prison yesterday
THE Fiji Prison and Correctional Service is geared-up to host its first heads of Pacific Islands Corrections conference.
Delegations from 13 Pcific countries Pacific have arrived and yesterday attended a church service at the Naboro Prison headquarters.
Prison Commissioner Ioane Naivalurua said the conference is all about the correctional services within the region, to meet and exchange ideas and experience.
Mr Naivalurua said the conference was to try and to improve correctional service in all the Pacific.
The conference is scheduled from October 11 -16 at the Forum Secretariat in Suva.
"We had the inaugural conference last year in Solomon Islands and this is the second conference but the ever first for Fiji."
"And we hope the conference will bring out the best of our experience put together and at the end, we can come to understand," he said.
Mr Naivalurua said other countries may have some things in common and perhaps the only thing to do was to share these experiences and ideas together.
The Heads of Pacific Islands Corrections Conference (HOPICC) is a fairly young organisation established at the first Conference in Honiara, Solomon Islands in 2007. The idea to establish the HOPICC arose during the 26th Asia & Pacific Conference of Correctional Administrators (APCCA) in New Zealand in 2006. Correctional Heads from the Pacific moved a motion that Pacific Island Countries should first conduct it's meeting in order to discuss issues that smaller island countries might like to be raised in APCCA as a collective voice.
This was a logical idea because small island countries face difficulty in attending APCCA due mainly to financial constraint. As a follow up to that development it was reported during the 27th APCCA in Hanoi, Vietnam, that 12 countries attended the first HOPICC in Honiara from 6 - 10 August 2007.
The H0PICC aims to enhance better correctional practices with a view to contribute to a safer community in the Pacific.