It looks like funding for the Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society is a goner. There is a story in the Dominion Post today that PARS will lose its $2.5 million contract.
This is a tragedy. PARS play a vital role in helping prisoners re-integrate into the community. For well over a hundred years they have helped with accomodation, facilitating job opportunities, and perhaps more than anything else, just being there for people who many in society want to ignore. They perform roles that busy probation officers simply can not do.
As Clayton Cosgrove notes in the article, the community will be less safe as a result of the funding being cut as people released from prison will lack the support to stop them from re-offending.
There are reports of concerns about some financial management issues. The work PARS does is important enough the the Minister and the Department of Corrections need to actively intervene to ensure it survives.
The overall issue of incarceration and rehabilitation in New Zealand needs attention. In the meantime, no matter what we might think of some prisoners, most people in New Zealand prisons will at some point re-enter society. Surely the key task while they are in prison, and immediately on their release is to work with them to make sure we do all we can to prevent further crimes being committed, and to help them find a path to meaningful and positive future. This is what PARS does, and the government needs to help them keep doing it.
Agreed, very bad move
Um Grant, I think the governments intention is to keep prisoners in prison as long as possible (as long as the public likes this idea). After all if we give them harsher penalties it wil give them longer to think about what they did wrong and when they return to society they will be very good nice model citizens.
National should watch super nanny, when you punish a child, you give them the punishment, then after this you talk to them, explaing what they did wrong and let them know you still care about them. You would never just punish your child and then not do anything else, they would just go back and do whatever it was they did wrong in the first place again. Its not rocket science.
Grant, normally i agree. This time i dont. We need now to be honest. We’ve mucked up on prevention, cuddling and kissing criminals. We’ve mucked up on rehabilitation. It doesn’t work. the evidence is there now. People are being harmed. We stuffed up. If we are seriously for the people, if we are to be taken seriously. we need to apologise. we need to admit our mistake and call to action ourselves. that is to be firm. Anyone who steps outside of basic values, they cop it.
We can then rebuild. If national don’t want to do it. We should.
Simon, unfortunately all the evidence shows that just releasing people from prison (and the vast majority do get released eventually) and letting them fend for themselves only leads to them going back to their old ways, creating more victims and suffering. Breaking the cycle takes work inside prisons (not nearly enough resources for this of course) plus afterwards to guide people in the right direction. It isn’t rocket science, but nor is it cheap.
dorothy; if you’ve ever been inside a prison – as in being inside, you’ll no that is complete nonsense. with respect.
crime is crime. there is no such thing as rehabilitation. criminals such the rehabilitation as a mechanism to reduce their time to get out or make for an easier time when inside.
trust me. i know
dorothy, also – attempting to rehabilitate people who have chosen not to adhere to common societal norms shows a breakdown in understanding the criminal mind. however, crime can be prevented. there is only one way. that is 1) to create the conditions in the environment that prevent the need for it. 2) at an early age ensure that cognitive processes are formed around the notion of severe consequence.
rehabilitation is a reward mechanism that falters by confusing the criminal mind that crime is actually rewardable. growing world wide reality and evidence shows rehabilitation does not work. my point, to answer your point is:
1) stern child development methods. consequences
2) educate on harsh crime penalisation
3) life means life etc
for anything less creates a serious social risk to those who want to exist normally in society wouldn’t you agree. the public don’t want us to be soft anymore
effective stern nuturing then
Or a stern regiment of effective nurturing.
simon
You may be right with the VERY serious end of the criminality scale. However genuine rehabilitation programmes are few and far between.
Recidivism is a major problem and there are programmes which have been shown to reduce recidivism by as much as 25%. That is something surely, in a society which simply cannot afford to keep criminals imprisoned until they die.
I dispute your suggestion (If I read it correctly) that rehabilitation will never work. One problem is that “law and order” is such a populist button with political parties that they keep ramping up the idea we are all unsafe and then tell ius tougher sentences are the only way to make us safer even when they know that there is little of no support in studies or reality for that position.
NZers are being duped all the time by Labour and National in this area.
more people die annually fro work related accidents than are murdered… funny they dont make the news and funny people dont feel unsafe going to work.
The group around rethinking punishment has produced some good focus and papers int his idea, attended by MPs from all parties yet we get the same old same old.
http://www.rethinking.org.nz/publications%20about.htm
Simon, tough sentences and education on harsh consequences both assume criminals;
think about the consequences before acting
think they will get caught
many murders, for example, are as a result of angry flare up, “Passion” and spur of the moment over reaction to something, no time or thought given to consequences.
i’m saying rehabilition, in new zealand’s current state, has not worked and will not work going on. the system needs a shock, a jolt if you like. it will not redirect itself otherwise.
on the 2nd on – yes, valid points tracey. valid. i extend that in agreeance by saying if; consequences exist irrespective of crimes of passion or melicious intent – in both cases, over time, society gains from a higher state of self-consiousness.
without the same, you may as well open the prison gates, let em out and allow them to cause havoc. which, is actually what we have said they can do and they do do now.
Simon
Rehabilitation must not be done in isolation of consequences, in fact most rehabilitationist never even suggest that happen.
I agree opening the gates and allowing them to cause havoc is what we do now but that is not because of a genuine attempt at rehabilitation in its various forms but because of an absence of commitment to it.
Until politicians start being honest with the public about what is proven to work and what isn’t, the public wont accept that genuine tried and tested rehabilitation programmes will actually create safer communities than the retribution based system we have now…
An example is the proven scheme national is looking at closing down, presumably to divert the minimal funding from it to housing 1 or 2 of the extra hundreds of prisoners their misguided retribution strategy will create.
The Canadians are very successful at re-integating prisoners back into society. They have put resources into a network of half way houses and rehabilitation programmes in the community and reduced re-offending rates by around 65%. In particular they target alcohol and drug abuse which affects nearly 90% of prison inmates.
New Zealand has only two half way houses funded by Corrections – each of them has 11 beds. In other words thats a grand total of 22 beds for around 9,000 inmates coming out of prison each year. No wonder we have such a high rate of recidivism.
Also 90% of prison inmates in NZ have alcohol and drug problems. Corrections only provides programmes to ‘treat’ about 5% of them…no wonder people think rehabilitation doesn’t work – we don’t really do any.
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