Returning Citizens: A quiet revolution in prisoner reintegration (original) (raw)
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THIS ARTICLE offers a brief overview of a desistanceoriented approach to supporting community reintegration in the state of Tasmania, Australia. While community service is typically discussed in terms of ‘payback’ as a form of punishment, it can be harnessed in creative ways to support prisoner reintegration and desistance processes. Compelling contributions from desistance scholars (see, for example, McNeill and Weaver, 2010; Schinkel, 2014) advance the recognition that people with offending histories benefit from multi-faceted supports over time to change their lives, living conditions and life chances. Through this lens, the remit of supporting reintegration extends from a traditional blinkered focus on securing essential items to aid survival post-release, to include pursuit of identity change, relationships and resources which enable sustained desistance and human flourishing. In collaboration with community-based stakeholders, Tasmania Prison Service offers prisoners opportunities to take part in a range of community service activities and restorative ‘giving back’ projects. Some of these are undertaken entirely within prison facilities, and others use the rehabilitative and reintegrative leave permits for day release.
Constructing a Culture of Prison Release
2011
An estimated 50,000 people, predominantly men, are released from prison in Australia every year. The number returning to custody within two years of their release -around 38% is the national average -attests to the vulnerability of people caught in the liminal space between prison release and so-called community (re)integration. This largely invisible space and its inhabitants are the focus of a qualitative study which, through discursive policy analysis and interviews with released adult male prisoners and post-release support workers in Victoria, Australia, seeks to understand the different ways in which release from prison is conceptualised and experienced. It construes these meanings, understandings and ways of experiencing -and the language and symbols by which they are conveyed -as the culture of prison release. The research seeks to qualitatively map this culture, tracing its points of coherence and conflict. This paper elucidates the study's cultural approach and, drawing on preliminary data, illustrates the perspective it affords of the interrelations between post-release policy, practice and lived experience. The chapter highlights, moreover, the usefulness of culture as an analytical and heuristic device for understanding the social dimensions of prisoners' return to the community.
The Booming Industry continued: Australian Prisons A 2020 update
The number and rate of people imprisoned in Australia has, with some exceptions, risen rapidly over the past three decades. The largest rates of increase have been in remand, women, and Indigenous prisoners. The flow prison population over a year in NSW appears to be 1.5 times the census or static population count due to the high numbers of remand and short sentence prisoners; reliable figures are not available for other jurisdictions. There has been a concomitant rise in the rate and number of prisoners being released to the community, noting that remand and short sentence prisoners make up the large majority of releasees. Many thousands of these releasees are back in prison within two years: on the prison conveyor belt cycling in and out. The majority of prisoners are from severely disadvantaged backgrounds, with serious health, mental health and disability concerns. Those with mental and cognitive disability and a history of abuse are grossly over-represented amongst the prison population, as are Indigenous Australians. In formal terms, the prison has a number of purposes: punishment, deterrence, protection and rehabilitation. But the legitimacy and indeed the viability of these purposes for the majority of those in prison and for the wider citizenry in the context of increasing imprisonment in Australia is challenged using social justice and community well-being analyses.
2015
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Home Office (nor do they reflect Government policy). RDS Occasional Paper No 83 The Research, Development and Statistics Directorate RDS is part of the Home Office. The Home Office's purpose is to build a safe, just and tolerant society in which the rights and responsibilities of individuals, families and communities are properly balanced and the protection and security of the public are maintained. RDS is also part of National Statistics (NS). One of the aims of NS is to inform Parliament and the citizen about the state of the nation and provide a window on the work and performance of government, allowing the impact of government policies and actions to be assessed. Therefore – Research Development and Statistics Directorate exists to improve policy making, decision taking and practice in support of the Home Office purpose and aims, to provide the public and Parliament with inform a t i o...