Funding CCTV cameras annihilated a proposal in NSW to create a mentoring program directed at young women in prisons or undergoing release.
AAP/Julian Smith
Women coming out of jail require forms of assistance that are not simply directed at technologies for prevention or elimination of recidivism, but rather that are focused on health and well-being.
Judge Steven Alm pioneered the HOPE project, the first of scores of swift and certain sanction programmes in the US.
Youtube/PBS screenshot
The success of probation programmes based on swift and certain sanctions has led to more than 160 such schemes operating in the US. Australia should consider whether the model might work here too.
Unless most prisoners are given a realistic prospect of rehabilitation, how much good can prison really do?
Shutterstock/sakhorn
Sentencing policy is a mixed bag of approaches: punishment, deterrence, protection and rehabilitation. The system will remain costly and ineffective until punitive instincts give way to a more rational approach.
Prisoners are released every day, but we don’t know how many. The lack of basic data is an obstacle to effective services that would minimise their risk of re-offending.
AAP/Dean Lewins/Image digitally altered
We simply don’t know how many prisoners are released each year, nor their demographic characteristics. As a result, we cannot tailor services that would reduce ex-prisoners’ risks of re-offending.
Most of Tasmania’s relatively small prison population is housed at Risdon Prison Complex.
Wikimedia Commons/'Risdon' by Wiki ian
Imprisonment rates in Tasmania have steadily declined over the past decade – the only state or territory where this has happened. That is a result of progressive and effective corrections policies.
Indigenous prisoners perform a welcome ceremony at the 2014 opening of Darwin’s $500 million prison, which is likely to be full by 2018.
AAP/Neda Vanovac
The Northern Territory stands out for having one of the highest imprisonment rates in the world - much higher even than in the US - and it’s hard to argue that this does the community much good.
The ACT’s new prison did not take long to fill up, which has tested the capacity of corrections authorities to live up to their stated high ideals.
AAP/Lukas Coch
The ACT’s first prison opened in 2009 with lofty ideals, but rising prisoner numbers and high rates of re-imprisonment are presenting a severe test of the capital’s reformist corrections agenda.
Queensland’s reliance on high-security facilities to house a growing prison population may be linked to the nation’s highest rates of return for prisoners on parole.
AAP/Dave Hunt
Queensland’s rates of imprisonment had been falling, but have undergone a sharp reversal - much of it driven by the nation’s highest rates of return by prisoners released into the community.
A report has found 34% of young people serving a community-based order and 66% in custody have a substance abuse problem.
Image from shutterstock.com
Improving health services in the juvenile justice system and the community could reduce the risk of youth offenders repeating anti-social behaviours, an Australian study has found. Published in the Journal…
A new social impact investing project in the US which aims to reduce recidivism in prisons has taken the original model further.
In April last year I wrote in The Conversation about an innovative financial investment mechanism called Social Impact Bonds, that was designed to address some of society’s wicked problems by engaging…