The Effective Interventions measures that are to start next year will involve a considerable commitment in extra resources for our Department.
While it is heartening to see the range of reforms intended, Iam mindful that Corrections is at the forefront in implementing many of them operationally. The extra workload includes managing new community-based sentences and other initiatives such as increased work programmes for prisoners, and bolstered reintegration and rehabilitation services.
Already Probation and Offender Services has started a recruitment drive, with 200 frontline staff needed over the next 18 months. That’s a substantial number of new people to source and absorb into our operation.
As always we need dedicated people to implement and manage these changes. At an operational level the work we do day-today is challenging - both out in the community administering tens of thousands of community work and community-based sentences, and in prisons.
So the work will continue in the prisons as well. In Corrections News in recent months we’ve considered new initiatives such as the reintegration case workers who have been brought into prisons to help soon-to-be-released prisoners manage their return to the community.
In doing so, we are mindful that prisons are highly controlled environments. I would like to consider for a moment the reasons why they have become much more so over the last decade. These include the increased prevalence of violent offences, the impact of new technologies such as cell-phones and the challenges they can pose to prison security and, of course, the emergence of more dangerous drugs which could cause havoc if they became widespread in prisons.
The result is that prison security is much tighter than it used to be and visitors can be routinely checked for contraband. The big positive of this approach is that fewer drugs are getting into prison, a point highlighted recently in a newspaper interview with a prisoner who has gained a double-major arts degree. She would never have done it if her drug supply hadn’t dried up. “I started enjoying being clear-headed,” she told the
Sunday Star Times. Despite much tighter management, the clamour to make prisons more spartan is often heard. We’ve been taken to task for allowing X-Box and Playstation consoles to be used in prisons so we decided to take them out, at least until a clear policy is set on their use. I’m not convinced having them in prisons is a bad thing, particularly for young offenders. But their presence has been ad hoc, and they could fit better if introduced in a more structured manner.
Prison life is not the soft lag some groups like to portray. To give into demands to eliminate all creature comforts within prisons would ultimately lead to a dehumanisation that would only create much larger problems for society when the prisoners are eventually released.
In the end, our business is about people. Our officers have to read the prisoners’ mood, provide discipline and encouragement and exercise a fair degree of judgement. As much as possible, we have to provide prisoners with incentives and rewards similar to those in wider community - especially given that most will one day rejoin society.
One of the most satisfying aspects of our job is that sometimes even people who have made the most dreadful messes of their lives do find the inner resources to turn the corner and discover potential that gives them a useful role in society.
Barry Matthews
Chief Executive
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