Inside the Violence Prevention Unit.
Lee* is 31 and has been in and out of prison for violence-related offences since he was 17. At present he’s serving an eight year sentence for a string of armed robberies and vicious assaults.
He was ten years old when he had his first brush with the law. As a child, he lived with various relatives as his father was often in prison and his mother moved to town to find work. Lee mostly lived with an older cousin, and was often hit by her boyfriend.
He’s sick of being inside. He sees himself as a victim of his own harsh life, and wants to find a way to live that keeps him out of prison.
Corrections Principal Psychologist Nikki Reynolds says Lee is a likely candidate for the Violence Prevention Unit at Rimutaka Prison.
"But he’ll need to go through the Unit’s rigorous selection process. The Violence Prevention Unit selects offenders very carefully because the programme and Working to stop the environment will only work for a specific kind of offender," she says (see below: Who's the Violence Prevention Unit aimed at?)
The Violence Prevention Unit at Rimutaka Prison opened in 1998 and is the only one of its kind in New Zealand. The violence prevention programme at the Unit lasts around nine months and takes up four days a week of the prisoners' time in intensive cognitive behavioural group therapy.
The Unit is separate from the main part of the prison and there are 30 men in it at any one time. The intake is staggered into groups of 10 and each 10 go through the programme together. All the therapy work is done in that group of 10 and individual counselling is used to address group-related problems.
A recent evaluation compared a group of men who did the programme with another group who did not, but who were very similar. This showed that over an average of three and a half years after release from prison, 23 percent more of the men who hadn’t done the programme were reconvicted for violent offending.
Dr Devon Polaschek, Senior Lecturer at Victoria University School of Psychology says given that violent behaviour is so ingrained and diffi cult to change, this is a very promising result.
"New Zealand leads the world in the area of violence prevention. Of course the programme has a modest success rate, but this is the hardest kind of work. We’ve got a small window of opportunity to try to change a whole life-time. The programme works astonishingly well given the situation."
Senior Psychologist at the Violence Prevention Unit Ruth Pracy helps the prisoners to understand the patterns behind their violent offending.
"They typically have some level of responsibility about their offending, but also a lot of denial. I often hear statements like: 'Yes, I did it, but they deserved it' or 'Yes, I did it, but anyone would have’.”
Ruth says that most of the men at the Unit have had troubled and chaotic childhoods, often in many different foster homes. They’re likely to have been physically and/or sexually abused.
"Some guys are covered in scars from childhood beatings," she says. Ruth says the men often see themselves as victims.
"They often justify their behaviour. For example, some of them say they have to be violent to keep their place in the pecking order; they think you can lose mana if you’re not violent.
"Another justification is revenge. Many know no other way. They’ve been brought up with it and think it’s the only way to deal with things."
One of the hardest parts of the programme for many of the men is the "offence-chain module". This involves each offender presenting to their group of 10 a detailed outline of the events around each offence. This is often the first time they’ve had to talk about their offending and the underlying patterns can be very personal.
"I’ve seen guys come out of this with their whole t-shirt soaked with sweat and tears. They re-live the events as they tell them, and as they see the pattern emerge there is often a moment of realisation that is very powerful," Ruth says.
The programme also covers communication, planning and relaxation techniques. The men are encouraged to suggest their own coping methods, such as distracting themselves by listening to music or going to the gym to do a hard work-out.
"We ask the group what they’d do in different situations. Say your mate's getting into a fi ght in the pub - the guys might suggest 'just walk out of the pub’, they might question whether you have the right mates. That’s a real issue for the gangs," says Ruth.
Encouraging non-violence: The Violence Prevention Unit is
self-contained in an attempt to create a culture of non-violence.
To ensure tikanga Maori is incorporated into the programme, the Unit uses the well-respected Te Whare Tapa Wha (four cornerstones) holistic health model, which ensures, for example, that wairua (spiritual health) is considered as important as physical health. They also use the concept of manaakitanga, which is a way of building people’s mana by helping them understand themselves.
Ruth says one of the rewards of her job is seeing those moments when the men have an insight into themselves.
"After that realisation they can never be the same again. They might offend again, but they’ll still be different - they’ll know what they’ve done."
Typically, he’ll be in his late 20s or early 30s. He will have started offending in his preteens and won’t be serving his first sentence. His current sentence will be for fi ve years or longer for a crime involving very serious violence, such as murder. He’ll have a very high risk of violent re-offending.
He will, however, have a lowmedium or minimum security classification, meaning that he doesn’t pose a high level of risk in prison. This is because the Unit doesn’t take people who will be disruptive to the culture of non-violence they are trying to create.
The programme isn’t for sexual offenders or those with a mental illness or head injury. The Unit also doesn’t take drug users, though most will have abused drugs and alcohol at some time in their lives.
The men also have to be near the end of their sentence, as the aim is for them to be released while the changes are fresh in their minds.
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