Prison break: Dropping New Zealand’s inmate numbers
Corrections is slowly reducing the jail population. But plenty of work still lies ahead, writes Andrea Vance.
The prison population dipped below 10,000 this week for the first time in more than two years. Since 1987, the number of people locked up had tripled – a result of successive tough lawand-order policies. Politicians have been slow to soften their stance, and change those laws, even though the system was creaking under the pressure of numbers.
So the milestone – achieved quietly on Thursday with 9920 inmates behind bars – is the result of an intensive, internal effort by the Department of Corrections.
And it comes as Stuff can reveal a new plan to fast-track prisoners through their parole hearings.
Senior Corrections manager Leigh Marsh calls parole the ‘‘back end’’ of his department’s work. ‘‘Probably about a third of our work is looking at how we prepare our long-serving prisoners for their parole hearings, for release.’’
But in the past four years, staff started to notice a pattern: fewer inmates were making parole. ‘‘The parole rate has been declining over the last four years. Earlier this year, only 20-21 per cent were achieving parole,’’ Marsh says.
Corrections does not decide when to release prisoners – that’s the job of the independent Parole Board. Between 7000 and 8000 prisoners, serving sentences of more than two years, come before the board’s 40 members in any year.
But Corrections can have an influence, by making sure offenders are suitable for parole when they come before the board. When the prison population started climbing rapidly, that started to slip.
Board members were finding offenders just weren’t ready for release, even when they were nearing the end of their sentences.
A briefing to Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis, from May, notes: ‘‘[A] concern that the board has raised is that Corrections is not delivering rehabilitative programmes to prisoners early enough and there are not enough prisoners being tested outside the wire, which means it struggles to release long-serving prisoners because they haven’t been tested in the community.’’
Testing outside the wire refers to reintegration programmes, which see longterm prisoners slowly introduced into employment. They also move into self-care units – a sort-of supervised flatting arrangement where they buy their own groceries and prepare their own meals.
These ‘‘trials’’ make sure the prisoner is ready for the outside world. Corrections spends around $200m a year on reintegration and rehab programmes.
The report also told Davis: ‘‘The board is completely reliant on Corrections for information so that it can make informed decisions on the release of offenders on parole . . . it struggles to get all the background information on offenders from Corrections.’’
Marsh admits these problems were related to overcrowding strains. ‘‘The pressure really is around scheduling. Getting people in the right beds, at the right prison, that delivers the right [rehab] programme. And when the system is under immense stress then we don’t have the flexibility to move people around the country.’’
So, prisoners miss out on taking the steps they need to achieve parole. Under pressure from politicians to drive down the muster, Corrections took notice of the board’s concerns.
A few simple tweaks have seen a turnaround in the trend in a few short months. About 30 per cent now achieve parole – meaning fewer people in prison.
Once offenders have served a third of their sentences, they come in front of the board, at least once every two years until release. A 2015 law change also allowed the board to set ‘‘goals’’ – rehabilitation or reintegration activities it expects to be completed between hearings.
To speed up the process, and avoid backlogs, Corrections staff got organised and anticipated what the board might request.
‘‘What the board was telling us [was] we are not always getting rehab in place prior to a hearing,’’ Marsh says. ‘‘We often scheduled it to the sentence release date, rather than the parole date. But the board are not going to release a prisoner that hasn’t had their rehab.
‘‘So, it’s nice and simple: we can prioritise who goes for rehab first.’’
Too often Corrections was also waiting for a direction from the board on reintegration, further slowing release.
‘‘Often we would do rehab and then we would wait for the board to indicate release and then we would look at reintegration. The board is telling us: don’t wait for us, go through rehab, move into reintegration – things like our Release to Work programmes and our self-care units.
‘‘We now have accommodation and support in place. And
‘‘We know that if you get home detention, you are far less likely to reoffend than if you get prison.’’
Senior Corrections manager Leigh Marsh
we don’t just find a house, we are starting to focus on social contacts, sponsors, those sorts of things. So, the prisoners learn to look after themselves and to have a meaningful day, then we move into a phase where they are more likely to be considered for release.’’
The law change also allows Corrections to ask the board to hear a prisoner’s case earlier – Marsh refers to it as a ‘‘Section 26’’ application, after the clause in the legislation.
‘‘The board may say to the prisoner: ‘Look, you are almost ready to go, but if you go and do a wha¯ nau hui then we’ll then consider you for release’. Now we are making that happen immediately, while the prisoner is motivated.
‘‘Then we bring that hearing forward and demonstrate the prisoner has met that criteria.’’
An army of senior advisers in prisons also meets regularly to make sure the paperwork – such as parole assessment reports – is ready. ‘‘The drive for it is getting the decision makers the right information, at the right time, and that is really the key,’’ Marsh says.
Getting swifter release dates isn’t compromising public safety, he insists. ‘‘At the end of the day, everyone is getting out. If we have a period of time when we can manage them with good release plans, support and some mechanisms to ensure community safety and the ability to recall if they don’t comply, that has just got to be better than releasing them cold.
‘‘We are very careful with our planning around how we support offenders and released prisoners in the community. Public safety is our absolute No 1 thing so our Corrections officers, probation officers, case managers, are all over that.’’
Parole Board chairman Sir Ron Young took up his role six weeks ago. He says the board’s benchmark legal test is ‘‘whether an offender would pose an undue risk to the safety of the community on release. If the individual continues to pose an undue risk, they cannot be released on parole’’.
He is supportive of ‘‘any initiative to increase prisoners’ uptake of rehabilitation and reintegration activities, to put them in the best possible position to be considered for potential release . . . It is in nobody’s interest to have prisoners unprepared for parole hearings’’.
And he says the board will always place importance on early access to, and successful completion of, those programmes.
With more efficient decisions at the back end, Corrections is also working on the ‘‘front end’’: remand prisoners.
Typically, a third of inmates are in prison awaiting trial. That peaked in March, at about 4000. And they rarely, if ever, take part in rehabilitation schemes.
With the Government oscillating on reforming bail laws, Corrections took matters into its own hands. A support service pilot, placing bail advisers in Wellington’s courts, is aimed at persuading judges to keep offenders out of prisons.
‘‘We help defendants apply for bail. If they have things like an accommodation or income need, we are trying to deal with that,’’ Marsh says.
‘‘We are literally saying to the judge: if this person gets bail today, this is where they will go, this is who will look after them, this is when they have got an interview with Work and Income . . . and the next day we go around to their house and say: ‘Come on, get in the car, we are going to make this happen’.’’
The idea doesn’t just keep bodies out of prison beds, it may also have a long-term impact on reoffending rates.
‘‘If you spend your preconviction time in the community, and start to address your offending – rather than on remand – then you are more likely to get a community-based sentence. We know that if you get home detention, you are far less likely to reoffend than if you get prison.
‘‘That is where we have seen the biggest change.’’
So, while politicians dither on how to solve spiralling conviction rates, Corrections has made practical changes.
Marsh says the results have touched 6000 inmates, and saved about 90,000 bed nights in the last year.
But National Party Corrections spokesman David Bennett believes the changes are not enough to achieve ambitious targets set by the Government. Justice Minister Andrew Little has said he wants to see the prison population fall by 30 per cent within 15 years.
Bennett says the Government doesn’t have the ‘‘political stomach’’ to relax sentencing and bail laws, necessary to achieve that drop.
National doesn’t want them to change either – but Bennett’s worried that ‘‘political interference’’ will threaten the integrity of the Corrections system.
‘‘Often these programmes are a tick-box exercise for prisoners. Speeding up these decisions could be detrimental to the quality of Corrections’ work.
‘‘And there are only certain economies of scale with these changes. To achieve their goals, they are going to have to do something radical.’’