Jarrod Gilbert: Baby Boomers can help fix prison problem

Volunteers teach reading and writing to prisoners, among other programmes, but such initiatives could be so much more. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Opinion

Dr Jarrod Gilbert is a sociologist at the University of Canterbury and the lead researcher at Independent Research Solutions. He is also a member of the justice advisory group investigating changes to the criminal justice system.

COMMENT: New Zealand has two expensive problems; too many people in prison and too many people retiring. Perhaps one can solve the other.

I got to thinking about this while I was embarrassing myself at the Christchurch WORD festival on Saturday night. Because I was busy mimicking an impromptu bowel movement on stage – for reasons that I assure you made some sense – I was unable to attend the awards night at my local volunteer fire station.

Both readers' and writers' festivals and our local fire brigades are worthy of praise not just for what they do, but also how they do it. Some 50 volunteers greased the wheels of WORD in Christchurch over six days, while 365 days a year 10,000 volunteer firefighters serve their communities at all times of the day and night.

Great things happen when people give up their time and do work for others and for the common good.

One issue that prevents people from engaging in volunteerism is time. But there is a growing group in society that has more time than most: retiring Baby Boomers. Perhaps it's an idea, then, to link people who have surplus time to those who could benefit from it.

When looking at the data around prisoners and their families, we find people who need help reading, help raising and mentoring kids, and help with all manner of basic life skills.

These people would undoubtedly benefit from the time and abilities of those with a lifetime of experience: from skilled educators, to those who have raised families, to those who know how to swing a hammer. And while volunteering in these areas is not specifically focusing on crime, it is focusing on the things that can prevent it.

There are programmes in which volunteers teach reading and writing to prisoners, and others that mentor at risk children, but initiatives like these are a drop in the bucket compared with what they could become.

There are many people who are prepared to give their time to make changes in the lives of other people, but they don't know how or it's not made easy enough. This is something we would do well to change.

If we work with offenders in prison and reduce their chances of offending on release, then the benefits are obvious. Less obvious, but arguably more important, are the flow-on effects of working with prisoners' families, particularly their kids.

In doing so, we give those young people opportunities to fulfil their potential but we also reduce the chance that they will become the next generation of offenders.

What makes our readers' and writers' festivals or our local fire brigades great could also enrich and enhanced our communities in other ways too. But this will require effort from people prepared to put their shoulder to the wheel.

It's not enough to criticise what's happening if we're not prepared to do something about it. That's not a challenge for retiring Boomers alone – it would be unfair to say that it is - but they are an obvious place to start.

The cost of maintaining retiring Baby Boomers is something of a taboo subject in New Zealand, but as the superannuation bill increases by billions it will become a topic harder and harder to avoid.

In exactly the same way, of course, that the cost of the prison muster was only widely recognised when it became a problem too big to ignore.

If the Boomers can find ways to invest even modest amounts of their time to help fix some difficult community problems, we may see retirement as an important resource and not just a ballooning cost.

In doing so the Boomers will also directly improve things for the generations that follow, a charge not often levelled at them.