Minister of Corrections Hon Damien O’Connor recently returned from a revealing fact-finding trip to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland where he sought new approaches to the rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners.
Mr O’Connor was accompanied by Prison Fellowship New Zealand’s Kim Workman, The Sensible Sentencing Trust’s Garth McVicar, and Corrections’ Manager, Strategic and Legislative Policy Bronwyn Donaldson.
Bronwyn says the group visited prisons in all three European countries and met with a wide range of ministers, correctional staff, and non-government organisations.
“We saw a variety of corrections environments in the three countries. In Holland, guards don’t wear uniforms and prisoners are classified into more than 40 management regimes rather than by security level.
“In Finland, the equivalent of Corrections Officers undergo extensive training for two years. In some countries, officers in more specialised roles study longer. For example, in Holland officers in youth units go through four years of training.”
Despite such differences, all three countries have a common focus on rehabilitating prisoners and preparing them for reintegration back into society on their release, Bronwyn says.
“As in New Zealand, all have systems identifying rehabilitative and reintegrative needs of prisoners which they then address through targeted programmes.”
One of the more interesting examples of this was HMP Latchmere House, a ‘resettlement prison’ in southwest London.
Corrections has already identified employment as a key reintegrative need because research shows that suitable employment reduces the risk of re-offending. Bronwyn describes the new-style British prison as a “very large-scale version of our release-to-work employment programme”.
The prison houses prisoners during the last 12 months of their sentences, but prisoners are only eligible if they have served more than half of a sentence of four years or more. The prisoners work in the local community during the day - 80 percent even find work themselves - and return to the prison at night.
The prisoners come from the local area and are also released locally, so they can stay in the same jobs.
Common themes across the three countries are increasing crime rates and increasing prison populations.
Even Finland’s prison population is increasing after changes to sentencing laws dramatically reduced prisoner numbers in recent decades. Interestingly, all three countries had broadly similar rates of reoffending to New Zealand, although some initiatives, such as resettlement prisons in the United Kingdom, have reported dramatically lower rates of re-offending for participants.
Bronwyn says the delegation saw many interesting ideas, some of which could be adapted to New Zealand. Work is now underway to consider these ideas and the Minister is very interested to learn more about the potential to apply them in a New Zealand setting.
The Minister will then decide which options should be investigated further.
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