Corrections incapable of rehabilitating prisoners, critics say

Prison reform advocates say the Corrections department is unable to deliver effective rehabilitation for prisoners.

In the last financial year, Corrections spent $376 million on rehabilitation - but most of the programmes it ran reduced reoffending by less than 2 percent.

This was because the programmes were not intensive enough - and there were better ones that should be funded instead, critics said.

Canterbury Howard League for penal reform co-president Cosmo Jeffery spent two years in prison in the early 2000s.

Corrections was spending "a hell of a lot of money" on rehabilitation programmes that made "marginal differences", he said.

"Imagine if the police department, say, got funded that amount of money and only solved 5 percent of the crimes. Would that be a good result?"

Prisoners who completed the 12-month drug treatment programme were re-imprisoned over the following year at a rate of 2.6 percent more than those who did not do the programme, according to Corrections' annual report.

Another programme aimed specifically at violent offenders reduced re-imprisonment by 11.5 percent, although only a small cohort of prisoners took part.

There were just 86 starts in the current financial year, out of 3098 across all the different programmes in prison.

Corrections as an organisation was unable to deliver effective rehabilitation for prisoners, Jeffery said.

"As Peter Boshier the Ombudsman has pointed out time and time again: Corrections is basically dysfunctional. It's a dysfunctional organisation, it has a culture of systemic aversion to change."

In a 2023 report, Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier found a range of systemic issues at Corrections and said its senior leadership team was failing to address a risk-averse and reactive culture.

This year, Boshier said he had not seen evidence that Corrections was changing its culture as a result of his reports.

Criminologist Roger Brooking said one reason the in-prison programmes were not effective was because the prison environment was "artificial".

"If you get caught with a positive drug test, you suffer a loss of privileges. So there are quite a few incentives not to use drugs in prison."

Brooking - who was also an alcohol and drug counsellor for prisoners - said many of his clients would go back to using substances the same day they were released from prison.

Most prisoners saw Corrections rehab programmes as a tick-box exercise, he said.

"Because it's the only way to get out of prison early. They do it to keep the parole board happy, not because they actually want rehabilitation."

The rehabilitation programmes that did work, were intensive, residential and run in the community, Jeffery said.

"It involves group therapy, individual counselling. It involves absolutely no alcohol, no drug use and no second chances."

One such intervention was the Alcohol and other Drug treatment courts; two of them operate in Auckland and one in Hamilton.

These courts reduced reoffending by 86 percent over the course of year, according to a 2019 evaluation.

Funding more of these courts would be a much more effective use of taxpayer money, Brooking said.

"The drug treatment in the drug court is 86 times more effective than drug treatment in prison."

Corrections responds

Deputy chief executive Juanita Ryan said Corrections dealt with the country's most violent, difficult and complex people and it was not always possible to turn them away from crime with one programme.

Not every person in prison was at the point of wanting to change, and Corrections supported prisoners through their different stages, she said.

Corrections continuously monitored the effectiveness of its programmes to ensure they provided clear benefits and value for money.

The cost of crime in New Zealand amounted to billions of dollars each year, she said, and this should be considered when looking at the value of rehabilitation programmes.

Corrections had a programme of work underway to review its rehabilitation and integration programmes to ensure they were effective and efficient, Ryan said.

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