Tuesday, 3 July 2007

Tight Discipline a Feature of Faith Based Unit

Kim Workman, National Director, Prison Fellowship, commenting on the Coroners Report into the death of Rex Hopper, rejects any suggestion that discipline in the unit is slack.

If you run a lenient disciplinary system, you will get a high level of violence and anti-social behaviour. Corrections and Prison Fellowship have developed a disciplinary process in the unit which has produced amongst the lowest level of incidents and drug use in the country. We have had about three assaults in the unit over the last year, none of them requiring medial attention. More significantly, and in a prison system with an annual random positive drug test rate of 16%, none of the men in the faith based unit have tested positive on random drug tests for two years.

When we opened the unit in October 2003, we realised that in order to reduce violence and in-prison incidents we had to teach the prisoners how to resolve conflict. Prison Fellowship and Corrections staff recognised that rules broken, or inappropriate behaviour, offered opportunities for teachable momentsand for the prisoner to reflect on their actions and how they impacted on the values and purpose of the unit.

At the same time, we acknowledged that nothing we did should interfere with the right of Corrections staff to invoke a formal disciplinary process. Assaults, drug offences, incidents affecting public safety, and serious offences were automatically reported to custodial staff.

Over the first six months, we introduced a peace-making model that could be understood and implemented by both staff and prisoners on a daily basis. We taught prisoners how to address conflict themselves, through a process that could be replicated when they re-entered society. The key features of this system is that:

Prisoners are treated not as individuals, but as part of a community of 60 prisoners.

Prisoners have daily accountability meetings. They meet in groups of 15 each evening those who are progressing in accordance with our values are affirmed and acknowledged; those that are falling short of the mark are challenged and supported by their peers to change.

Prisoners are taught to sort out inter-personal conflict between themselves. In some cases a mediator is assigned to facilitate the process.

Where an issue affects the wider community, or cant be resolved, it can be referred to an eldership group, comprising selected prisoners, and custodial and Prison Fellowship staff. In some cases, the issue may be referred to the accountability group for discussion

Its a tough process. If you ask an offender which is the hardest being judged by your peers or appearing before the Court they will tell you that Court is a breeze. By and large, adversarial discipline does not produce individual change. Most of the men have been through the Courts time and again they just take their punishment and continue as before.

When prisoners are made directly accountable to the person they have harmed, or to the community at large, its a different response. They have to earn their way back through changed behaviour, through apologising to the group, knowing that they could be exited from the unit if they continue to behave badly.

The results speak for themselves. The men have made a collective decision to abide by the values and principles of the unit. The drugs are still out there and available the men have decided that the positive living they experience, outweighs any kicks they get from drugs.

The unit has been operating for three and a half years. Kim Workman says that a number of prisoners have now been out of the unit for more than two years, and the Department will be in a position to evaluate the results before long.

The anecdotal evidence is that there is a significant number of prisoners released from the unit who, on past performance, were expected to back inside by now, but have not re-offended. We believe the evaluation will produce some very good results

He could not say when a second faith based unit would be built, but the matter was to be reviewed by Corrections in 2010. Priority is being given to the Effective Interventions Strategy all we have to do is to convince the government that the faith based unit is an effective intervention. There are currently around 50 prisoners wait listed for the unit.

ENDS

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