Kim WorkmanProject Leader

Rethinking Crime and Punishment

Prisoner Reintegration

Practise in Search of Theory

From the 20 July 1910 speech by Winston Churchill

We cannot impose these serious penalties upon individuals unless we make a great effort and a new effort to rehabilitate men who have been in prison and secure their having a chance to resume their places in the ranks of honourable industry. The present system is not satisfactory. ……………

Reasons for the Lack of Research

• ‘Nothing Works’

• Nervousness about appearing soft on crime

• Political climate promotes the status quo

• Sentence management stops at the prison gate

The traditional response to Prisoner Reintegration

A job,

Finding God, or

The Love of a Good Woman/Man

Seven Reintegration Needs - 1999

• Acquire suitable accommodation

• Obtain employment

• Manage finance

• Manage relationship issues

• Develop positive community support;

• Prevent victim-related problems;

• Achieve post-release health care continuityVirginia de Joux (1999)

Ministerial Forum on Prisoner Reintegration - 2004

• Reintegration is the ‘cornerstone’ of the Department’s approach to integrated offender management

• The principles of Risk, Need and Responsivity will tell the Department how to work with offenders, based on their Risk of re-offending, their level of Need, and Responsivity factors

Risk, Needs, Responsivity

• Risk – by being able to identify those who are most at risk of further offending, and provide services to mitigate against that risk, the Department can have a significant impact

• Need – Services should be targeted at specific needs and in dealing with reintegrative needs it may have to target a multiple range of needs and how those needs relate to each other

• Responsivity – there is no point in attempting to either deliver a service to someone who doesn’t want it or delivering it inappropriately without taking into account their response

Corrections Strategy

• Assess for reintegrative needs at the start of sentence whether in the community or in prison;

• Establish a sentence plan for the whole sentence and review that plan at key intervals;

• Establish a release proposal well before the end of the sentence, involve whoever it needs to in that proposal and ensure the proposal works;

• Try to target services by Risk, Need and Responsivity

Jeremy Travis and Joan Petersilia (2001)

Prisoners moving through the high-volume, poorly designed assembly line

(of corrections)…are less well prepared

individually for their return to the community and are returning to communities that are not well prepared to accept them.”

The Control Narrative - Managing RiskAssumptions

• All ex-prisoners are dangerous and present a risk to public safety  i.e.  “ They may have paid their debt to society, but the punishment isn’t over. “

• Ex-prisoners respond best to the constant threat of sanctions, i.e. intensive home visits, random drug tests, home confinement, strict curfews, expanded periods of supervision. 

Is it Effective – what the research says

• Increased surveillance in the community does not result in a decrease in criminal reoffending

• Additional control increases the probability that technical violations will be detected, leading to a greater use of imprisonment

• Prison does not act as a deterrent  

Why Doesn’t it Work

•  The exercise of power and coercion is least likely to bring about internalized change.  When the parole period is over, prisoners will return to the former level of  offending.  It doesn’t internalize change.

• After a long prison sentence, ex-prisoners resent a high level of sanctions, and will defy the probation officer, or set out to undermine the sentence

• “If I’m that dangerous, why aren’t I still in prison?”.  Many prisoners would prefer to “max out” –

The Control Narrative – Managing Risk

Bullets kill and bars constrain, but the practice ofsupervision inevitably involves the constructionof a set of narratives which allows the kept, thekeepers, and the public to believe in a capacity tocontrol (crime) that cannot afford to be tested toofrequently

Jonathan Simon (1993) Poor Discipline:Parole and the Social Control of the Underclass

The Support Narrative – Managing NeedsAssumptions

•  Ex-prisoners have “multiple” needs”.   They arise from:

– The Impact of imprisonment e.g. post-traumatic stress, separation from family, unfamiliarity with work

– Needs that existed prior to imprisonment, e.g. poor education, mental health issues, drug and alcohol dependency;

– Needs related to societal forces, e.g. poverty, isolation, discrimination

The Support Narrative – Managing Needs

In New Zealand, the Department of Corrections focuses on criminogenic needs, i.e. those problems that seem to be empirically related to offending – requiring access to addiction counseling, cognitive therapy, life skills training, violence prevention, and the like.

 

The Support Narrative Is it Effective? – What the Research Says

• Prisoners, when asked what needs should be met,  confirm that “straight,” basic “survival” needs i.e., concerns like housing and employment, are almost always mentioned prominently

• Rehabilitative interventions can marginally reduce recidivism rates when treatment is correctly matched to a client’s criminogenic needs

Does it Work?

• The concept of a straight support model is difficult to sell politically.  Why prioritise the needs of ex-prisoners against the needs of other citizens?

• There is a view that ex- prisoners need to make amends for their crime first, before receiving the benefits and support of the state.  However, there is no funding for restorative justice post-sentence, to enable that to happen

• Community Probation is not resourced to assist ex-prisoners meet all  their needs – but what little support it does provide may make a difference

• The “Effective Interventions “ strategy has invested heavily in employing corrections staff to identify the ex-prisoners reintegrative needs, but has declined to invest in providing post-release services to meet the needs of prisoners, i.e. to deliver on the reintegration plan

From the 20 July 1910 speech by Winston Churchill

there shall be an individual study of every case; that all convicts shall be distributed by the central agency between different prisoners' aid societies of all the different denunciations, and all the different charitable societies; that the whole business of police supervision shall be absolutely suspended and the whole system of ticket of leave come to an end completely;

They need not see them nor hear of them again, but will be dealt with entirely through the agency of these societies, working under the central body, whose only object will be to do the best for the convict………………….

The Risk – Need Model Assumptions

• Community Probation should try to do both – assert control, but provide opportunities for treatment

• We know that straight control doesn’t work – if we do some treatment then it will be more politically acceptable 

Is it Effective?  What the Research Says?

• Mixing the two approaches produces confusion – the probation officer has a .38 in one hand and a social worker’s manual in the other

• Inevitably, the control activity will take over.  In the cop-counsellor model, coercion usually dominates.

• Ex-prisoners do not respond favourably to coerced treatment – the two approaches are incompatible.  However, without heavy coercion, some ex-prisoners will not turn-up for treatment.

• The model ignores the role of the community.   The ‘carrot and stick’  model focuses almost exclusively on the individual ex-prisoner. If re-entry is to be a meaningful concept, it implies more than physically re-entering society, but also includes some sort of “relational reintegration” back into the moral community

What is Reintegration

Reintegration means full inclusion in and of a wider moral community. Social dependency and intensive supervision (or so-called carrots and stick) does the opposite. 

Strengths Based Model – Restorative Reintegration

• Prisoner reintegration starts the day an offender starts a prison sentence; planning is the key.

• Prison should be as much like the real world as possible

• “Wrap around” Community Services have the best chance of working – providing a mix of support and accountability.  Get ex-prisoners to help ex-prisoners.  Get ex-prisoners doing voluntary work in the community.

• If prisoners feel accepted as part of a community, it is a powerful incentive to change.

• The greatest challenge for prisoners is not finding work or accommodation.  It is dealing with the stigmatisation.  A positive community attitude  provides a powerful incentive to change.

• The greatest predictor of success is hope.  When prisoners have something to live for.

Restorative Reintegration - Assumptions

• Provide opportunity for appropriate praise and approval

• Focus on mastery and competence rather than personal liability;

• Promote mutual respect;

• Terminate disapproval with forgiveness;

• Offender as a member of a communities of care (families, the school, the law abiding community”

Restorative Reintegration - Assumptions

• Formally reconcile offenders with their victims, and the community

• ‘De-labels’ gang and offender families, and recognises and reflects positive changes in parental behaviour

• Involve gang and offender families in voluntary community service, and nurturing behaviour

• Strategies and processes of moral inclusion

"We have some staff that still believe the role of a probation officer is like a social worker and that sentence compliance should take a second step. We've been emphasising ... sentence compliance is the No 1 issue in terms of public safety."……………

– Barry Matthews, CEO, Dept of Corrections, Dominion Post, 21 February 2009

Prisons are not for rehabilitation – they are for punishment

Corrections Manager – (yesterday)

In my view, the department should not be involved in prisoner reintegration – it should be the role of the community”

Another Corrections Manager - (yesterday)

The Way forward

“Agreement on how the state and the community should work

together to support ex-prisoners and their whanau/families

will not solely depend on the extent to which stakeholders

can reach agreement. The future of effective prisoner

reintegration lies in the government’s willingness to move

beyond the existing conflict between managerialism and

the promotion of a culture of control, to a model of prisoner

transformation that has at its heart, concern for the social

advancement of all New Zealanders.”

• Reintegration as Rehabilitation

• Centralised, structured process focussed, mechanical

• Prisoner as an object – we do things to or for them

• The offender fits the system - (RNR, IOMS, Sentence Management)

• Reintegration as Reintegration

• Decentralised, community-responsive, organic

• Prisoner is a person with whom we have a relationship – we do things with them

• The system fits the offender –dynamic, organic shaped around the offender and their family

Issues for Resolution

• Key provider's) with central, coordinating role

• Focus on reintegrative “needs”

• Prisoner as an object – we do things to or for them

• Investment in capability and capacity building to handful of providers

• Group of diverse community based providers responding to diverse local needs

• Focus on prisoner stigmatisation -relationships in the community

• Prisoner is a person with whom we have a relationship – we do things with them

• Nation wide provider capacity and capability building is the goal

Issues for Resolution

• Department drives reintegration from within prison

• A departmental arm coordinates activity within community

• RNR as the basis of the reintegration model , with strengths based add-on

• Sentence management targets small group of released prisoners who present risk

• Community drives reintegration from within community

• A community arm coordinates activity within community

• Strengths based model with strong human rightsframework

• Community focuses on those responsive to reintegration e.g. mentoring

Issues for Resolution

• Support for whanau “where appropriate”

• Focus on behavioural-cognitive interventions

• RNR as the basis of the reintegration model , with strengths based add-on

• Sentence management targets small group of released prisoners who present risk

• Whanau support an integral part of process – that is not negotiable

• Focus on wider social development of offenders and families

• Strengths based model with strong human rightsframework

• Community focuses on those responsive to reintegration e.g. mentoring

Issues for Resolution

• Restorative Justice a potential “add on”

• Goal is to reduce reoffending

• Probation as pivotal to reintegration – deploys community resources to achieve Corrections goals

• Restorative practise at heart of reintegrative activity

• Goal is to promote social development outcomes – the reduction of reoffending is as consequence of that

• Community drives reintegration – in partnership with Probation and in recognition of its statutory role – to achieve social development goals

Issues for Resolution

The Way Forward

Agreement on how the state and the community should work together

to support ex-prisoners and their whanau/families will not solely

depend on the extent to which stakeholders can reach agreement.

The future of effective prisoner reintegration lies in the

government’s willingness to move beyond the existing conflict

between managerialism and the promotion of a culture of control, to

a model of prisoner transformation that has at its heart, concern for

the social advancement of all New Zealanders