Ann Arnold: Hello, and welcome to Background Briefing. I'm Ann Arnold.
Most people in prison have been there before.
John: I don't want to ever get in a position where I'm likely to be in that sort of place where that might possibly happen again.
Ann Arnold: After being released, the challenges of slotting back into society and changing previous lifestyles are huge. Crime researcher Don Weatherburn says that more than half the prison population will re-offend in their lifetime.
Don Weatherburn: Many of those who are locked up will be back; 60% if you're non-Aboriginal, 71%, 72% % if you're Aboriginal, but more than 20% of the population in jail is Aboriginal.
John: I've gotta be on me toes all the time, as far as sobriety is concerned. I've got to keep away from people and places and faces and things that prompt me back down the path of drinking, yeah.
Ann Arnold: John, an Aboriginal man, recently served four and a half years for manslaughter. On his release, he was categorised by the New South Wales Department of Corrective Services as medium to high risk of re-offending.
John: Probably because of my history of alcohol abuse and drug abuse, yeah.
Ann Arnold: And does that tend to bring out violence for you?
John: Yes, it does. Intermittent as it is, but very serious when it happens, yeah, very serious.
Ann Arnold: Australian prison numbers are rocketing, and so is the cost to the states and territories. The national average cost is $290 a day for each prisoner. Don Weatherburn, director of the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, says governments should be focussing on recidivism above all else.
Don Weatherburn: Well, it's hugely important. We tend to preoccupy ourselves with creating alternatives to prison, forgetting that most people going to prison this year or last year are actually going back to prison. Now, once you realise that, most of the leverage in reducing the prison population can be obtained by reducing the rate of return to prison, rather than reducing the number of people who go there in the first instance, and that tends to have been neglected.
Ann Arnold: But there's a critical lack of support and accommodation to help offenders stay on track when they return to the community.
John: I think that if my housing was threatened or taken from me in some way, shape or form, that it would threaten my sobriety and my sanity, which would make everything just crumble to the floor, you know. I'd just go through the floor and be back where I was.
Ann Arnold: Governments continue to spend much more on locking people up than on the cheaper option of preventing them returning to jail.
Lou Schetzer: It's dumb public policy, it's dumb economics, it's costing the taxpayer an enormous amount for these people to be continually re-offending and re-incarcerated. And we really need to look at a better way of investing the public dollar that encourages that reintegration into society so that people who are released from prison can make that valuable contribution to society.
Ann Arnold: Lou Schetzer, from the New South Wales Public Interest Advocacy Centre.
In New South Wales, the only organisation that specialises in long term offender re-integration is about to wind up. For 50 years, CRC, the Community Restorative Centre, has been supporting ex-prisoners with a high risk of reoffending. But a shift in government policy means CRC's intensive casework won't be funded.
Lou Schetzer: I think it's absolutely crucial that services like CRC continue to exist because we've seen through our limited consultation study, and I know that CRC have seen through their own casework of the enormous value of this service. So it would be extremely disappointing for those services to be cut back in any way.
Ann Arnold: The CRC runs several programs, but its core business of supporting high risk offenders over two years or more is ending. Specialist caseworkers are being let go in inner Sydney, Parramatta, Newcastle and Broken Hill. A new round of government tenders prioritises short-term services.
Clients such as Lee worry about friends still in jail who now won't receive the support she's had.
Lee: I just sit here and think where would I be, because I'm so happy where I am. But where will them girls go, and they'll just re-offend. And it scares me to think maybe that would have been me.
Ann Arnold: Prisoner rehabilitation, or re-integration, inevitably gets drowned out by the noise of law and order politics.
Michael Pelly: Ever since the mid-'90s there's been this endless spiral of, you know, who's the toughest on crime; I'll whip him with the rattan, he'll bring out the chopping block. It was completely ludicrous.
Ann Arnold: Michael Pelly is a legal journalist and he was the media advisor to the recently dumped New South Wales Attorney General, Greg Smith. Greg Smith was a reformist in a conservative government. He wanted to reduce jail numbers, and in particular to tackle recidivism. As we'll hear later, he would pay the price for his approach.
For the past year, John has lived in a small flat available through the CRC, the Community Restorative Centre. It's in a '70s red brick building next to a railway line. Ajay Philip has been his caseworker.
SFX: John getting Ajay a drink of water
The building is owned by a community housing organisation. The only way John can be there is because he has Ajay to help him manage things. It's an agreement that CRC has with a couple of different housing groups to provide supervised accommodation for people who've left jail, and would otherwise have few options. The caseworker is part of the package.
Before jail, John had lived in Redfern, where, one long, drunken night, he killed a man.
John: Yeah, it was December so the sun goes down about 7-ish, and the last thing I remember was standing on the guy's balcony, not the victim's balcony but the guy's place who it was, standing on his balcony and admiring the view around sundown. That's the last thing I remember. And apparently the incident occurred at 2.30 or thereabouts the next morning. So what happened between then and 2.30 the next morning, I don't know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I haven't got a story. He's dead. Because of me. And I've got to cart that around for the rest of my born days.
Ann Arnold: When he left jail, John wasn't allowed to live around the Redfern area anymore. That was a parole condition. But there was no affordable accommodation available anywhere else.
John: I was talking to a welfare officer and they're hard enough to get access to in jail, and he suggested CRC to me. And he gave me a sort of brief rundown, in that he said, oh well, they'll be able to provide you with short-term accommodation coming out that Parole will definitely approve. And you'll be helped, you'll be plugged in with various services and you'll be transitioned out of the jail environment back into the community, and helped possibly even further with medium to long term accommodation. And I jumped out of my seat and waved furiously and said, 'Yes, yes, yes, oh thank god, yes, how soon can we get this happening?' He said, 'Settle down son, settle down, you'll have to go on the list.' And the ball started rolling from there. And I eventually met young Ajay here. And that's how we got that kicking, yeah. The long and the short of it is I would still be in custody today were it not for CRC.
Ann Arnold: If John were still in jail, it would be costing the state between $200 and $300 a day to keep him there. With CRC supporting John in this flat until he has permanent accommodation and can live independently, it's costing the government a third of that, an estimated $70 a day.
There are other benefits. John has been sober for nearly two years, the longest period of sobriety, he says, outside of his four-year jail term. And with CRC's prompting, he's been talking to university medical students about Hepatitis C, and has an ongoing role as a Hep C ambassador.
John: There's been the opportunity for all of that, and what I've got out of it, the self-worth that I've built through it, that my kids have seen me actually do something, instead of, like, fall round and slobber and dribble and talk shit and carry on like a pork chop. They've gotten to know me. And I rediscovered me, I discovered…I rediscovered I've got a vocabulary. I rediscovered that I had a fuckin mind. I had all these things hiding in the background somewhere that I'd covered up for years.
Greg Smith: Drug addiction can be, often is, usually is a lifelong struggle, just like alcoholism. So my hope is that that will help, a lot of people will be able to turn their lives around if they can get off the drugs, get a job, get somewhere to live and get help, rather than just being thrown into jail. It'll be better for the community generally, we'll have more citizens who might have been permanent criminals going straight.
Ann Arnold: Greg Smith, the most recent New South Wales Attorney General, had, before entering politics, been the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions. He is still a Liberal Party MP and declined an interview, but in a speech to a defence lawyers' conference in 2012 he said he used to be a hardliner, but his thinking had changed. He now understood that people in prison had often grown up in deprived areas.
Greg Smith: Well, you shouldn't be surprised that a lot of those people turn to crime. And then they find it hard to get out of, because they often haven't had education, or much education. Some of them have learning problems but others just weren't interested, they weren't encouraged. So, that has sunk in much more since I've been in parliament, where I've had to look away from just the prosecution side, at the defence side, and at the community generally, and working out, well, why isn't this working, this law and order push.
Ann Arnold: Greg Smith said he realised recidivism was a huge issue.
Greg Smith: And also we want to reduce New South Wales re-offending rate by focussing more on rehabilitation, rather than retribution. To keep people away from what I call (it's getting a bit hackneyed) the university of crime. Prison or detention. That's not being soft on crime, it's being smart on crime. Thanks for your attention.
Bradley: I was on drugs, smoking ice and using heroin at the same time. I was homeless. Living at a mate's house here and there, and just living day to day.
Ann Arnold: Bradley grew up in the Vietnamese community and started using heroin in Sydney's Cabramatta district when he was 13. He's now 30, and he's been out of jail for four years, after a lifetime of short sentences for theft, drug charges and vehicle offences.
When we met, Bradley was tired, he'd just done a night shift in a bakery. CRC's Ajay Philip has been working with him for several years.
Bradley: I was lost at the time. I didn't know what the future was like.
Ajay Philip: How to change the old pattern?
Bradley: Yeah, just didn't know how to change the old patterns. It's even harder when you've got no support network. In my case, I don't talk to my family, I'm basically alone 24/7, you know, and the only person that's there is CRC, you know?
Ann Arnold: The struggle for Bradley and others to rebuild their lives isn't heard in the bellicose politics of law and order.
Ray Hadley: Now, we got a weak-kneed Attorney General and Attorney General's Department in New South Wales.
Ann Arnold: There's no louder voice than Sydney shock jock Ray Hadley, who ran a concerted campaign against former Attorney General Greg Smith and his 'weak kneed' approach to crime.
Ray Hadley: My God, what's it gonna take? Will it take Greg Smith's son to be killed, Barry O'Farrell's son to be killed before someone does something about it? What's it gonna take, men? Hang your head in shame Barry. Hang your head in shame Greg Smith. And the New South Wales cabinet, hang your heads in shame. You don't deserve to serve another term in government.
Ann Arnold: When Barry O'Farrell was replaced as premier by Mike Baird last month, it was widely predicted that Greg Smith would be dropped as attorney general, largely because of his stance on law and order. And he was.
His former media advisor, Michael Pelly is a long time legal journalist, still writing for The Australian. He has previously been an advisor to Philip Ruddock as Federal Attorney General in the Howard government.
Michael Pelly says Greg Smith's interest in keeping people out of jail where possible was popular for a while, including with the new Premier, Mike Baird, who was then the Treasurer.
Michael Pelly: That was very popular in some sectors of the government, including in the treasury sector, because we were actually looking at the prison numbers, and crime had been coming down, and the population had fallen under 9,500. And for the first time we looked at the thing and said, well, we don't need all these jails, we can actually close a few of them. And the treasurer thought this was tremendous, you know, less money again, those figures, $70,000 a year for an adult, $250,000 a year for a juvenile, that adds up to a lot of hospital beds you can provide and a lot of deficit and infrastructure you can build. That was all going very well until the pressure went on, and the whole notion that anybody would be seen as soft on crime.
Ann Arnold: Michael Pelly describes the pressure applied by 2GB's Ray Hadley.
Michael Pelly: In fact the most pressure I should say came from one particular announcer on 2GB, Ray Hadley. Ray has very solid links to the police and has a very particular view about law and order policy, and his voice is extremely influential.
Each state parliamentary office up at parliament has a radio selection, and I can assure you that from 9 o'clock until 12 o'clock I'd say 80% of parliamentarians had Ray Hadley on the radio and had Ray Hadley telling them for a good four months that Greg Smith was soft on crime, was a raving lunatic, that Barry should sack him, that the state was going to pot, and what are we going to do? Barry save us, get rid of Greg Smith please!
And once that pressure goes on day after day after day it becomes a bit wearing. You look for little victories, and when there are none coming all your colleagues look to you, and it's more about an erosion of support…'yes, Greg, we support what you're doing' became 'do you know what you're doing'.
Law and order was meant to be one of our strengths. We're a conservative government, we are meant to show to the community that the safety and security of its citizens is paramount. Even if some bloke breaks into my house, and Greg Smith says to me, 'Well, maybe we can turn him away from a life of crime.' Well, guess what, I don't care about turning him away from a life of crime, I care about retribution, I'm the victim, I'm meant to be the centre of this whole process.
Ann Arnold: And it was in fact a safer community that Greg Smith was working towards as well.
Michael Pelly: This is the whole folly of the exercise, that it doesn't allow for a nuanced approach. It doesn't allow for someone to say we have a different approach for serious, hardened criminals who are just…some people are just born bad, and no matter what you do, you're not going to turn them around. But there are some people…and don't forget we were a penal colony, founded on the idea that people could get a fresh start. Macquarie emancipated the convicts, made them productive members of society.
Ann Arnold: Michael Pelly, former advisor to the New South Wales Attorney General.
Ajay Philip: Brad takes a lot of pride in his place, it's always looked amazing, every time I've come by.
Ann Arnold: I like your fish tank.
Bradley: Thank you. The orange one is the African…I think it's called a cichlids…
Ann Arnold: If Bradley wants to become a 'productive member of society', he can't go back to his old drug-using networks. He's a rugby league fan, so his CRC caseworker Ajay has tried connecting him to the community that way.
Ajay Philip: Are you gonna go play Oztag some time, any time soon?
Bradley: You keep bugging me about that. Yes, I went a couple of times, and yeah, I need a bit of improvement [laughs].
Ajay Philip: So he started to come along to just social football games that are local, just meeting people down there and playing footy. And that's been a really good thing, some exercise as well.
Bradley: We've got a tragic bulldogs supporter right here, so…
Ajay Philip: Yeah, it was already something he was interested in, and just a really easy avenue, a really welcoming bunch down there, and now it's just about twisting his arm to get down there a bit more.
Ann Arnold: A redesign of New South Wales government tenders means this kind of ongoing support will barely exist. Under the new Corrective Services contracts, there is one nine-month program for 20 high risk clients per year. The main transitional program is for three months only. That's for 540 people. Some clients may be extended for a second three months.
The Department of Corrective Services declined an interview request because the tendering process is underway. But in a written statement the Department said that the highest risk of re-offending is in the first three months after release, and that the new package of short-term programs represents an increase in funding. You can read the full statement at the Background Briefing website.
5,500 prisoners were released in New South Wales last year. Up to half the prison population has a mental health disorder. A significant minority—up to 15% —have a cognitive impairment. Professor Eileen Baldry from the University of New South Wales has found a number of these problems overlap.
Eileen Baldry: What is though particularly concerning and worrying is that of those people with either a cognitive impairment or a mental health disorder, over 70% have a whole range of things, they don't just have one impairment or disorder, and so they are significantly disadvantaged in seeking support.
Ann Arnold: Professor Baldry says the most useful kind of program for people deemed at high risk of re-offending is multi-faceted and versatile.
Eileen Baldry: Really the kind of program we need and that we know works is…some people call it wrap-around, some people call it holistic, some people call it a fully supported housing project, that's the kind of program that is the most useful, because what it does, it addresses, either sequentially or sometimes at the same time, a lot of those issues.
Geraldine Blinco: I have a current client who's in her mid 30s who does use drugs, who is illiterate, who often finds herself in violent relationships, and quite recently then was knocked unconscious by a partner.
Ann Arnold: Geraldine Blinco is a women's case worker with CRC.
Geraldine Blinco: I just often wonder about her cognitive ability due to long term drug use, also the violence and the number of times she's been knocked unconscious, and my ability then to have her assessed. So I contacted Arbias, which is a brain injury unit who does assessments, and their waiting list was a minimum of a year. So even to find out what we're dealing with with this woman, how can we support her, how can we help her, is really limited, because we don't really know what she's dealing with. Her memory is really, really bad. Her memory could be bad because of the drugs, it could be bad because of the violence and how often she's been hit on the head, and her horrific traumatic childhood would be another factor in all that.
Ann Arnold: And if she's still using, what can you hope for there? What are you trying to achieve with her?
Geraldine Blinco: I'm trying to get her into a long-term rehab. So, have her detoxed and then get her into a long-term rehab. But again, she doesn't have a mobile phone. She loses them all the time, so she never has one. It's really hard to stay in contact with her, so I just literally turn up at her house, her home a lot of the time and just sort of catch her.
Ann Arnold: And is she pleased to see you when you turn up?
Geraldine Blinco: Oh absolutely, absolutely. She is one of the ladies who saves up all her bills and all her letters and any correspondence that comes in and asks you to read it. So I make phone calls and sort out stuff for her, because often stuff's late because she hasn't paid it because she can't read it. She's a lovely lady. But again, she doesn't present well. She is only in her 30s, she doesn't have any teeth, she is often unwell, she has major illnesses on various levels. But she's just very traumatised, very complex, but her achievement now is that since she's been with us she hasn't been back to jail.
Ann Arnold: For how long?
Geraldine Blinco: Well, I've been working with her since I started with this organisation, so nearly three years.
Ann Arnold: And is that the longest she's been out of jail?
Geraldine Blinco: Yes, yes, absolutely. So for her that's a massive achievement.
Ann Arnold: Geraldine Blinco, one of the CRC case workers. She has around 12 clients.
There's little empirical evidence in Australia on what works in post-release support, but Eileen Baldry says overseas research suggests you need at least two years of wrap-around support.
Eileen Baldry: Work particularly in the United Kingdom, some in Canada and a bit in the United States, shows very clearly that the recidivism rates from those kind of programs are very low. They're very low over time. So over two years you get a much lower return.
Ann Arnold: The CRC's transition program works with an average of 224 people a year. The prison return rate for those clients is one in 10 after one year, and that's much lower than the state average. Eileen Baldry is on the CRC's advisory committee. She says its 50 years of specialisation makes it invaluable.
Eileen Baldry: They have around 50 years' experience in developing ways to work with people who have been in prison. One of the things I've seen over 25 years of researching and working in this area, is that I see time and again mainstream services say: 'Oh well, this person's not ours, clearly they're too difficult, or they've come out of prison, or they should be looked after by Corrective Services...'
Ann Arnold: This is Health or Housing, they're saying, no, too hard for us.
Eileen Baldry: Yes, particularly Health, some community housing. So you have to have an organisation that trains its workers. So CRC trains its workers, and in fact they train a whole range of other organisations too in what are the things that you have to be alert to, the ways in which you work to support somebody.
Ann Arnold: Eileen Baldry says that while most re-offending does occur in the first three months, for the high risk offenders much longer is needed.
Eileen Baldry: Post-release, you really need skilled workers, and you need time. This is not something which is going to be addressed in three months or six months.
Ann Arnold: Under the new model in New South Wales, there will be some additional three-month accommodation services.
Last year the Public Interest Advocacy Centre released a report called 'Beyond the Prison Gates', which surveyed 26 jail leavers. The report's author, Lou Schetzer, found that one-third of those with no support had slept rough on their first night out of jail. Others had short-term crisis accommodation only.
Lou Schetzer: Their accommodation situation was going to expire within a couple of months, and after that point of time they did not know what they were going to do. They basically were very fatalistic and negative about their perception of the future. They thought it was likely they were just going to end up sleeping rough, returning to the street, or that they saw it as a very valid option to commit an offence to go back inside because at least they'll have some secure housing there.
Ann Arnold: Lou Schetzer found that, by contrast, a group of ten people in the survey who had a CRC caseworker and accommodation had a very different outlook.
Lou Schetzer: The people that we spoke to who had accessed the services of Community Restorative Centre were far more positive and far more optimistic about their future. Importantly they had started speaking to the workers from CRC prior to their release, so that there was quite a comprehensive exit plan for them upon their release, and they were ready for a number of the challenges that they were going to face upon their release.
Ann Arnold: Victoria has a lower recidivism rate than New South Wales. The biggest provider of post-release services in Victoria is ACSO, the Australian Community Support Organisation. It's tendering for the two transition programs in New South Wales; the three-month one, and the very small nine-month one. But Vaughan Winther, ACSO's deputy CEO, says the contracts have shortcomings.
Vaughan Winther: I think what you can try and achieve in three months is quite limited. I think for some people they may not need that much, depending on what their circumstances are, but for others you'll need more. So I think good program design should be around flexibility. That's probably our biggest issue, is around the flexibility.
Ann Arnold: Under the New South Wales model for the higher risk group where the needs are very complex, would you agree that the skills needed of those workers need to be pretty advanced?
Vaughan Winther: Absolutely.
Ann Arnold: Is the pay rate high enough within that contract to attract those people?
Vaughan Winther: Probably not. It's something that is a concern for us, but it's something which I think is probably manageable, otherwise we wouldn't have bid for it.
Ann Arnold: Vaughan Winther, from the Australian Community Support Organisation in Victoria.
The New South Wales contracts have been designed and will be awarded without the benefit of external evaluations. There is no data in either Victoria or New South Wales to show what happens to clients after they leave support services.
And even though ACSO in Victoria works with 15,000 people a year across different parts of the justice system, it doesn't get evaluated by the government that funds it.
Vaughan Winther: We haven't seen that happen for some period of time. Most of our services are just funded directly, there's not a lot of either in-built or integrated evaluation. And the evaluation shouldn't be done by us, it should be done externally, and it should be done independently, but there's not a lot of that goes on.
Ann Arnold: In New South Wales the CRC met recently with Don Weatherburn at the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research to see if an evaluation could be done. But Don Weatherburn told them they would need at least 600 people to study, and a control group of the same size, to get a meaningful result.
Don Weatherburn: You get caught in a vicious circle. You can't show the program is successful so you can't attract additional funds. But if you don't attract additional funds you can't scale the program up so that it can be evaluated.
Ann Arnold: Don Weatherburn says in general there's inadequate research into correctional programs.
Don Weatherburn: For a very long time politicians didn't really care too much about evidence-based policy, they were more concerned with pacifying the public, acting tough, looking like they were not going to give anyone an even break, that sort of politics of law and order.
Ann Arnold: Don Weatherburn, from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
The CRC is now 'exiting' its clients. It will tender for the new programs. But even if successful, it would only receive a quarter of the funding it's had, so couldn't continue its long-term work.
Lee: What I'm worried about is that after June I will not have any further support in the way I have with Geraldine. And I feel a little lost now.
Ann Arnold: Lee is one of the CRC clients being exited, so she'll lose the support of caseworker Geraldine Blinco.
Lee: I have Family Court in July, so it's going to be hard [tearful].
Ann Arnold: Geraldine has been going with you to your Family Court appearances?
Lee: She's been there for every one of them, just about. And even if it's a five-minute session, she's been there. And just to have that person, to get that call that morning and say we're meeting, and it's just that strength to get there and get through the day.
Ann Arnold: And the Family Court…do you want to explain what's happening there?
Lee: Because I was in prison my son's with his dad, and I haven't seen him.
Ann Arnold: Lee served nine months in jail for fraud in her workplace, where she had an admin job. She was addicted to poker machines, and continues to suffer from anxiety and depression.
Geraldine Blinco: Lee comes from a very unstable, unsupportive background, and it seems that her family is playing a part in that as well.
Lee: My thing in my life is my mum I'm scared of [tearful], and I had to go to counselling with my son, and Geraldine was coming and just being there, and my mum turned up once. And it was the scariest day for me. And Geraldine was there to get me through it and made sure I had the support, and I felt safe and it didn't hurt me like it used to.
Ann Arnold: Geraldine probably won't be able to be at an all-important Family Court case in June. Lee may also lose her small house on Sydney's bushy southern fringe. It's provided through CRC's housing partnership. She has been supported by a good local GP, and a Salvation Army congregation.
Lee: You know, I sit at church and I listen to what they talk about and how I can use it in my life, and I sit there and I'll in tears at something, thinking about something, because I'll be reflecting and I even think, all these people must look at me and think all she does is cry, and I even felt guilty and thought maybe I should just tell them. And then one of the leader ladies at the church said to me, they don't need to know, and I said but I feel like I'm living a lie, and she said no, they don't need to know because some people aren't ready to accept it. So that is hard, because yes I did do wrong, but that's not me now.
Ann Arnold: John, the CRC client we heard from earlier, is very anxious about losing his flat. His caseworker Ajay Philip, who's now finished up work, was hoping John won't lose all the gains he's made and will continue to develop his talents.
Ajay Philip: I mean, from early impressions of meeting John, he's always been quite articulate and able to express an articulate opinion about things. Things don't always go to plan but…[John laughing ] John doesn't believe in mobile phones, which makes contact and arranging things difficult sometimes. But these things…maybe having a diary one time would…
John: I've got one! I've got one!
Ajay Philip: That's good. Is that a recent thing?
John: This is a recent thing, this is something that happened last Thursday.
Ajay Philip: Congratulations. I'll part ways with you knowing that you can keep a diary. This is good news. It took two years, but we got there [laughs].
Ann Arnold: The names of the former prisoners speaking in this program have been changed to protect their identities.
Background Briefing's co-ordinating producer is Linda McGinness, research by Anna Whitfeld, technical production by Andrei Shabunov, the executive producer is Chris Bullock, and I'm Ann Arnold.