Judith Collins rearranges deck chairs on the ship of Corrections
Judith Collins is captain of the ship called Corrections. Since she took over, the rehabilitation and reintegration
services have been combined into one team; and two weeks ago, Ms Collins announced that Corrections is to employ 227
case managers to work directly with prisoners to reduce their risk of re-offending. Collins declared: “This is a major
advance in the management of prisoners in New Zealand.”
There’s is a fatal flaw in this strategy. These case managers will only assist inmates into rehabilitation programmes
in prison. But reintegration is a process that takes place when offenders are released – and very little is done by
Corrections to assist ex-prisoners in the community.
1) Finding suitable accommodation is the biggest reintegration need faced by ex-prisoners. In Canada, where re-offending
rates are much lower than in New Zealand, 60% of federal prisoners are released into half-way houses – funded by
Canadian Corrections. But here, Corrections provides funding for only two half-way houses in the entire country - with a
total of 28 beds. This means that less than 1% of sentenced inmates are released into supervised accommodation each
year.
2) 90% of prisoners have alcohol and drug problems and 90% also have problems with literacy. The Department makes some
attempt to address these in prison but the vast majority of the 20,000 people in prison each year receive no assistance
whatsoever. These problems then become reintegration issues. But once inmates are released, the Department is more
interested in monitoring compliance than helping ex-prisoners learn new skills. Responsibility for that is passed to
agencies like PARS or the Prison Fellowship.
3) The Department provides so little funding to PARS or the Prison Fellowship that both have to rely on the extensive
use of volunteers. As a result, New Zealand now has the highest ratio of volunteers to prisoners of any country in the
world - a ploy which enables the Department to avoid paying for professional services. Corrections seems to have so
little interest in what happens to inmates after they leave prison, it does not even bother to evaluate the
effectiveness of reintegration services offered by these agencies. Dr David Wales, Assistant General Manager for the
newly combined Rehabilitation and Reintegration team reinforces this attitude by referring to reintegration as
'ancillary services'.
4) Making matters worse, the Department undermines the Parole Board’s efforts to reintegrate high risk offenders by
ignoring Section 43 (1a) of the Parole Act. This section requires the Department to provide the Board with all
information relevant to the inmate’s offending - which obviously includes their history of substance abuse. Parole Board
chairman Judge David Carruthers says that without this information, the Parole Board is ‘Flying Blind’ - which became
the title of the critically acclaimed expose of the Corrections Department by Roger Brooking.
Conclusion: Corrections claims to have combined rehabilitation and reintegration services into one team. This is just an
illusion - because the Department doesn’t really have a reintegration service. For the most part, it leaves
reintegration up to other agencies and ignores the results. The result is that 52% of prisoners return to prison within
five years. For those under the age of 20, the figure is 70%. The ship of Corrections is sinking on the rocks of
recidivism - while the captain is busy rearranging the deck chairs.
ends