Cut off from the realities of adult life

A subsidised bus takes families to Waikeria once a month. Picture / Geoff Dale

A young man, released from prison recently, was left at home all day while his parents worked.

When his mother came home at night, her son was still in his bedroom.

"Why didn't you get some lunch?" she asked. "Why didn't you mow the lawn?"

"Nobody told me to," he replied.

It was an extreme case of a general rule: our prisons, as they operate today, take away even the limited social skills and responsibilities that their young inmates might have had.

Almost by definition, the five-fold rise in the crime rate in the 20 years after about 1970 reflects a decline in social responsibility.

Birth control and other changes delayed the responsibilities of parenthood, rising unemployment destroyed work responsibilities, and social attitudes celebrated individual freedom rather than family and social service.

If prisons are to help in reducing crime, they need to rebuild prisoners' responsibilities to their families, to work and to the community. As things stand, they do the opposite.

"The prisoner is analysed and treated on an individual basis and there is a naive belief that you can run a 100-hour programme that may in fact lead people to want to change," says Prison Fellowship director Kim Workman.

The prisons offer programmes on specific issues such as drugs and alcohol, violence and poor parenting, but only if one of those issues is a prisoner's primary "criminogenic" need - making him or her most likely to commit another crime.

"Each prisoner receives one intervention per sentence," the Corrections Department says.

Family and friends, potentially a prisoner's strongest motivators and supports, are cut off by the nature of imprisonment.

The mother of a man serving a 15-year sentence says her son's partner has left him, taking their two sons with her into a new relationship.

"Fifteen years is a long time. You can't expect her to wait that long," the mother says.

Another man, jailed 10 years ago, told his wife: "If you want to go to someone else, you can."

But now his term is ending and his mother says he doesn't want to leave.

"He has only just found out that his wife has gone to someone else. He doesn't want to come out. He doesn't know whether he could handle it."

Prisoners' isolation has intensified as prison rolls have ballooned since 2002, forcing the prisons to transfer more inmates far away from home.

Donna Bala, who was remanded to Mt Eden Women's Prison, was given one hour's notice when Mt Eden filled up and she was moved to Arohata Prison in Wellington. She had to ring her family to tell them where she was.

"It costs you $1.30 a minute to talk on the phone system and you can only talk five minutes. If you have four kids, you can give them one minute each."

A mother with a son in jail in Christchurch says her son's grandmother from Dunedin was not allowed to see him because she was not an approved visitor.

The department confirms that visitor numbers have dropped nationally since a new booking system was introduced in 2000. Prisoners now have to nominate who they want to visit them. Approved visitors can then visit if the prisoner gets permission to see them at a specified time. An appointment slip is mailed out. The whole process can take at least a week, and often no one bothers to tell either prisoners or their families about it.

Keeping in touch can be costly.

The Prisoners' Aid and Rehabilitation Society raised $57,000 from charities last year to subsidise children's visits to their parents in jail. But spread between the country's 7651 prisoners, that's just $7 a head.

The society also subsidises a bus for Auckland families to visit prisoners in Waikeria Prison once a month. But driver Roger Fowler says the prison often does not tell families that the bus exists.

Other contacts with the community have also been reduced. The target number of prisoners allowed out on work gangs to do community service dropped from 160 in 2004-05 to 68 this year. Only 15 prisoners worked outside the prison during the day on "Release to Work" last year, compared with a target of 40.

Integration manager Phil McCarthy says expanding this programme depends on community support. Recent publicity over segregated prisoners picking fruit in Hawkes Bay shows that is not always forthcoming.

"I understand what the public mood can be around some of this stuff and that has always made it difficult for Release to Work to get off the ground," Mr McCarthy says. "But it's on my list to increase the numbers going out."