Huntly Community Corrections Growing New Opportunities for Offenders

Huntly Community Corrections has started a new Huntly Community Garden project to teach offenders serving sentences in the community how to grow their own produce, helping to stretch budgets a little further and providing healthy meal options for their whānau.

Seedlings donated by Spring Hill Corrections Facility horticulture training yard are being utilised to develop the garden which will grow seasonal produce throughout the year.

The next step is to develop a Work and Living Skills programme to enhance the lessons learnt in the community garden, says District Manager Rowan Balloch.

“This is a great initiative and now we need to look at what comes next. Perhaps that is teaching people how to make and maintain compost bins, worm farms and propagation for seeds so the entire process can be replicated at home. Or perhaps we need to look at alternative growing methods for those people who don’t have the land available.”

The idea for the gardens came as a result of community Corrections staff asking the local community and offenders what they think might be of benefit. Many people mentioned the benefits of increasing self-sufficiency as the cost of healthy food had increased.

Rowan explains another benefit of the project is increasing the self-esteem of the offenders who work in the garden.

“There are a range of ways Corrections reduces re-offending and one is through projects such as this garden. Growing your own food from seed is a real accomplishment and being able to provide your whānau with a healthy meal that you have produced yourself can give a real sense of pride.

“It’s these intrinsic rewards that reinforce positive behaviours. When we align this with the other rehabilitative and reintegrative needs of our offenders, we can help to make our communities safer because we are making a difference in the lives of the people we are working with.”

Christine Faull, Assistant Prison Director Spring Hill Corrections Facility says that gaining new skills is important both in the community and in the prison.

“Another possibility we are looking at is a regular donation of seasonal vegetable plants from the prison,” she says.

“We have an excellent garden here and prisoners gain meaningful qualifications while working in the horticulture yard. It makes sense to spread the opportunities to those serving sentences in the community so that they can develop skills that will benefit their communities also. There may even be unit standards available for the prisoners to achieve in seed raising and plant propagation so it is really a win-win.”

Spring Hill Corrections Facility has already ordered in the seed that prisoners will start sowing, with the first batch of plants being ready mid-May for winter gardening.

ENDS

© Scoop Media