Australian Government Attorneys General's Department - Crime Prevention and Community Safety

1 Introduction

Correctional authorities throughout the Western world are examining a variety of means to reduce the rate of re-offending among ex-prisoners. One crime reduction strategy is the provision of services and supports to assist in offenders' post-release adjustment. This review summarises literature relating to post-release issues and services. The introductory chapter provides a background to the remainder of the document, with a broad overview of the current state of Australian corrections, and an examination of the purposes and outcomes of imprisonment.

Researchers and practitioners are increasingly interested in the experiences of prisoners as they re-enter the community, as well as the means of promoting post-release adjustment for those prisoners. This interest is borne of a recognition that community safety can be enhanced by minimising the risk that returning prisoners will re-offend. However, little is known about the post-release experiences of ex-inmates of Australian prisons and remand centres beyond findings (detailed later) that suggest a large proportion of Australian prisoners will re-offend in the period following release. A widely held belief in many English-speaking jurisdictions that 'nothing works' in offender rehabilitation1, also meant that until recently, the delivery of services to prisoners after their release was at worst non-existent, and at best inconsistent and under-funded.

This review is one component of research investigating post-release interventions for returning prisoners. This report addresses various aspects of post-release experiences and services, drawing on international and Australian literature (refer Box 1.1). Areas of theory and practice examined include:

describing prisons, prisoners and the purposes and success of imprisonment (this Chapter)
examining what is meant by post-release services (Chapter 2)
describing models of post-release service delivery (Chapter 3)
identifying the challenges confronted by ex-prisoners as they re-enter the community, (Chapter 4), and
describing specific programs to assist in post-release adjustment, outlining challenges to the implementation and delivery of services, and detailing research needs (Chapter 5).

The tendency to re-offend is in part linked to how effectively an offender has been rehabilitated whilst in custody and how easily he or she has made the transition back into the community following release. This review therefore necessarily addresses issues of in-prison rehabilitation, transition from custody, and integration with the broader community. Aspects of custodial and community corrections are also addressed because the process of integration into mainstream community life should not occur only after exit from custody or release from supervision. In this sense, this is a review of interventions aimed at providing ongoing supports and rehabilitation for prisoners, rather than interventions delivered only after imprisoned offenders2 have been released.

Box 1.1 Information sources employed in this review

This review draws on information from a range of sources that were identified between October 2002 and October 2003.*

Primary sources were publications produced by relevant agencies, namely:

The Home Office (United Kingdom);
Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons (United Kingdom);
The United States Department of Justice;
Correctional Service of Canada;
The National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO, United Kingdom); and
The Urban Institute (United States).

Searches were also conducted on relevant databases (CINCH, ProQuest) and on the internet, using the following key words alone and/or in combination:

prison
prisoner
release
post-release
intervention
recidivism
recidivist
re-entry/reentry
aftercare
transitional
throughcare
reintegration
resettlement
community

Important published works that were themselves referred to in the items sourced above were also accessed.

These searches resulted in articles from academic journals and from publications produced primarily for practitioners. Academic texts, public domain documents produced by or for government, web sites, and newspaper articles containing relevant information were also consulted.
This review is comprehensive, but it is not exhaustive. For example, only English language materials have been included, and as a general rule, only works appearing in the last ten years (that is, 1993 to 2003) have been incorporated. However, certain seminal pieces have been referred to in order to provide context for more recent thinking and practice. The majority of the publications reviewed originated in North America and the United Kingdom, with very few Australian works: this review therefore necessarily has an international focus.

* A substantial and important report on the practical, theoretical and policy aspects of prisoner re-entry has been produced since the compilation of this literature review. The report has been published by the (USA) Re-Entry Policy Council, a partnership of (US) government agencies, relevant professional associations, and concerned non-government support and/or research organisations. This report can be found at the website for the Council, http://www.reentrypolicy.org(accessed February 2005).

Certain trends, innovations and phenomena in the administration of the justice system and in social welfare are also related to issues of post-release adjustment. For example, alternative sentencing options to custody, such as drug court or home detention, provide means of diverting a prisoner before he or she experiences the challenges of re-entry. Early crime prevention programs that aim to build protective factors within young people can act to divert at an even earlier point in potential criminal careers. Unfortunately, these associated conceptual issues are beyond the scope of the current work and while aspects of these issues are raised, they are not addressed in any great detail.

Importantly, jurisdictional differences in the philosophy and policy guiding imprisonment practice, and in the characteristics of the prison population, mean that many of the international findings discussed may not be directly transferable to the Australian context. When relevant, the jurisdiction(s) in which research was conducted will be specified. It is critical that an equivalent body of Australian research is developed, and knowledge gaps in the Australian post-release experience and management of offenders are discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

Prisoners and Imprisonment

The Purpose of Imprisonment

Criminal sanctions fulfil various functions (McGuire 2003; Tonry and Petersilia 1999):

condemnation and retribution, where sentencing allows society to symbolically show its disapproval
restraint and incapacitation, which aims to reduce or eliminate the opportunity for further crime, by removing criminals from the mainstream, or at least limiting their activities to reduce crime opportunities
deterrence, or preventing future crime by increasing the negative outcomes for criminals when offences are detected, and
rehabilitation, or assisting offenders to change their behaviours and so preventing further offending.

Beliefs about the functions that the criminal justice system should serve can be grouped into three broad categories (see Hollin 2002):

a retributionist stance, which aims only for just desserts - for criminal justice dispensing punishment commensurate with crimes
the utilitarian position, that seeks primarily to reduce offending in a cost-effective way, regardless of whether this outcome is brought about by punishment or by rehabilitation, and
an humanitarian orientation, which strives for offender rehabilitation as an end in and of itself, to address the many disadvantages that confront prisoners.

Australian corrections are charged with protecting the community and providing rehabilitative opportunities for prisoners to both reduce offending and enhance quality of life (see Box 1.2). The sizeable investment of public monies in the correctional enterprise (see below) means that correctional authorities must ensure that public safety is a visible product of this investment.

Corrections must also balance public demands for criminal justice responses to real (and perceived) crime, and the complex relationship between media responses to crime, public opinion, and policy direction. Overseas practitioners have noted that the general public can tend to demonise all offenders, and ignore the long-term crime consequences of not actively intervening to address the issues confronted by these prisoners (Maddess and Hooper 2002). Further, some in the USA have advocated for the 'principle of least eligibility', which denies prisoners any free services for which citizens in broader the community would have to pay (see Petersilia 2003). In Australia, incarceration is often seen as the punishment of last resort, yet one local commentator observed that the mainstream Australian media rarely reports on positive rehabilitative stories because they do not make exciting news, and remarked that responses to prison issues other than calls for harsher punishment tend to be disregarded as 'the bleeding heart bleatings of someone who's never been a victim of crime' (Pinkney 2002 p. 18).3 However, this does not mean that the general public will never countenance other non-custodial criminal justice responses. For instance, everyday observers' justice responses to hypothetical criminal cases tend to centre less around prison when their knowledge about non-custodial options increases (see Israel and Dawes 2002).

Box 1.2 Objectives for Australian Corrective Services

Custody: to protect the community by the sound management of prisoners commensurate with the risks they pose to the community, and to ensure the environment in which prisoners are managed enables them to achieve an acceptable quality of life consistent with community norms;
Community: to protect the community by the sound management of offenders commensurate with the risks they pose to the community, and to ensure the environment in which offenders are managed enables them to achieve an acceptable quality of life consistent with community norms through referral to social support agencies;
Reparation: to ensure work undertaken by prisoners or offenders benefits the community either directly or indirectly (by reducing costs to the taxpayer);
Prisoner/offender programs: to provide programs and opportunities that address the causes of offending, maximise the chances of successful reintegration into the community and reduce the risk of re-offending; and
Advice to sentencing and releasing authorities: to provide sentencing and releasing authorities with advice to assist the determination of the disposition of prisoners and offenders, their release to parole, and the necessary conditions for their supervision and post-release supervision.

from The Report on Government Services 2005 (p. 7.9, SCRGSP 2005)

Australian correctional services therefore hold the unenviable position of guaranteeing public safety, delivering just punishment and restitution, successfully rehabilitating, convincing the public that correctional rehabilitation can produce crime reduction benefits, and doing so with maximum productivity. Further, this must be done under the most intense public and media scrutiny, and in the context of demands for ever-more punitive responses to crime (what some observers have labelled 'penal populism'; see Roberts, Stalans, Indermaur and Hough 2003).

Prisoners in Australia

A snapshot of the Australian prison population as of 30 June 2004 (Australian Bureau of Statistics; ABS 2004a), showed that there were 24,171 adults held in custody in Australia. Australian prisons are, on average, currently operating at around maximum capacity (see SCRGSP 2005). The total expenditure on Australian prisons in the financial year 2003/04 was $1.6 billion, with the recurrent cost of maintaining a single prisoner averaged at $162 per day (SCRGSP 2005).

Of all Australian prisoners in June 2004, 19,236 were sentenced to a term of imprisonment. The majority of these convicted prisoners (60%; including periodic detainees) were sentenced to aggregate terms of up to 5 years, with a median aggregate sentence of 38 months (indicating that half were sentenced to terms of this length or less). However, around three-quarters of all sentenced prisoners were expected to serve less than five years.4 The median time expected to serve was 24 months. Unsentenced prisoners (those awaiting hearing, trial, sentencing, or deportment) constituted one-fifth of the prison population. At 30 June 2004 they had, on average, served 5 months, with 90% of these prisoners having spent 12.5 months or less incarcerated. Almost half (47%) of sentenced and unsentenced offenders' most serious offence involved violence or the threat of violence. Only 10% of all sentenced and unsentenced prisoners' most serious offences were related to illicit drugs. Indigenous Australians were over-represented amongst both sentenced and remand prisoners, constituting about 21% of each group (see ABS 2004a).

The Australian prison population does not remain stable over the year. The flow of inmates in and out of prisons reflects changes from remand to sentenced status, release from remand, the completion of sentences, and discretionary release under supervision (i.e., post-release community orders, such as parole). For instance, the number of new admissions of prisoners sentenced to full-time custody in the quarter year ending June 2004, was 6,234. The average number of prisoners under parole orders in the community on the first days of the month during the same quarter was 8,612 (ABS 2004b). Within each of the Australian jurisdictions, rules for counting prisoners, and the means of tracking them through the criminal justice system differ. This, coupled with the flow in and out of custodial sites, makes it difficult to ascertain exactly how many individuals enter and exit prisons each year.

Counting difficulties aside, the ABS (2003a) observed a number of general trends in the prison population snapshots compiled over the past decade, including:

a 45 per cent increase in size of the prison population, exceeding the 15 per cent growth in the general population
an increase in the rate of imprisonment, from 118 prisoners per 100,000 adults, to 148 per 100,000
remandees (unsentenced prisoners) proportionally accounting for more of the prison population
a larger proportion of Indigenous offenders
a larger proportion of prisoners sentenced to an aggregate sentence length of 10 years or more, and
women constituting a larger proportion of the total population (although still in the minority compared with men).

Australian correctional authorities must now manage a larger prison population than in the past, which is increasingly made up of prisoner subgroups with special needs (eg Indigenous offenders, offenders held on remand, and women; see Chapter 4).

The Outcomes of Imprisonment

International research

The relationship between imprisonment and crime is complex and therefore difficult to examine empirically. Statistical simulation research examining how imprisonment and crime interact at a societal level faces a range of methodological issues that are not easily resolved (see Spelman 2000). The majority of statistical research exploring associations between prison and crime rates has taken place in North America, and recent sophisticated models of crime and punishment suggest that expansion of the US prison system will reduce the crime rate (Spelman 2000). Similar conclusions have been drawn using Australian data (see Sauders and Billante 2003). These findings do not, however, indicate that imprisonment is the most cost-effective means of crime reduction (Spelman 2000).

An extensive systematic review of studies of criminal justice system interventions in North America (MacKenzie 1997) concluded that incapacitating prolific offenders at an appropriate point in their criminal careers could reduce crime. However, the crime reduction effect is diminished when low risk offenders who probably would not have re-offended, are incarcerated. Difficulties in assessing the relative risk and which point offenders are at in their criminal careers also mean that incapacitation can be an expensive crime prevention option.

Other research has examined how various sentencing options (eg prison versus intermediate sanctions versus traditional probation) influence levels of recidivism among individuals. A recent meta-analytic5 study of various sanctions employed in North America concluded that there is no strong evidence to suggest that harsh punishment-based sanctions (such as imprisonment) deter re-offending (see Smith, Goggin and Gendreau 2002). International research suggests that other correctional interventions that aim to 'get tough' (such as boot camp) or that increase the degree with which offenders are monitored in the community do not impact upon recidivism to any greater degree than other more traditional criminal justice responses (see MacKenzie 2000).

Re-offending by Australian prisoners

The precise number of prisoners who exit the Australian prison system each year is unknown for reasons outlined above, however some estimates place it at over 43,000 annually (see Baldry, McDonnell, Maplestone and Peeters 2003). How successfully these offenders integrate into mainstream society is also unknown, although one indicator of the effectiveness of imprisonment is the rate at which ex-prisoners re-offend.

The ABS (2004a) reports that 58% of those sentenced and unsentenced prisoners held at June 30 2004 were known to have served previous terms of imprisonment. Among Indigenous offenders, this figure was 77%. Other data indicate that of the prisoners released from Australian prisons in 2000/01, 47% had received a further (non-fine based) correctional sanction of some sort within two years of release, and for 37% of all released prisoners, this sanction was prison (SCRGSP 2004). Thus imprisonment in its current form does not seem sufficient to prevent a large proportion of Australian prisoners from committing new offences after release. New approaches to offender management are needed to lower the rate of recidivism among returning prisoners.

Rehabilitation to reduce crime

Data are not conclusive regarding the degree with which imprisonment can fulfil all of the functions ascribed to the justice system. Imprisonment can serve to incapacitate and allow offences to be denounced and condemned but its deterrent effects on future offending have not been convincingly demonstrated. However, there is an increasingly large body of (primarily North American) research supporting the crime reduction benefits of offender rehabilitation.6 Irrespective of any humanitarian notions, rehabilitation (unlike many other approaches to prisoner management) has shown its worth as a crime prevention tool under certain circumstances (Cullen and Gendreau 2000). Some researchers have argued that research evidence to date indicates that punishments such as prison are best used for purposes other than reducing recidivism (eg condemnation), and that rehabilitation should be used to minimise re-offending (Bonta 2002).

The two dominant approaches to reducing offending - rehabilitation and imprisonment - are not mutually exclusive, and as already noted, rehabilitation and reintegration are explicit goals of Australian custodial corrections. The period when offenders are under the control of the prison system can provide a unique opportunity to stabilise and rehabilitate because authorities can ensure treatments and services are delivered in a consistent and timely fashion. In this sense, the period of incarceration can be used to increase the health and social adjustment outcomes for prisoners, and so ultimately improve the health and safety of the community (Taxman 1998).

One principle of effective rehabilitative programming (see Chapter 3) is that interventions should be multimodal - they should be used in combination to address the range of issues that confront each offender. Prisoners tend to be challenged with social, psychological and economic disadvantages that can impede integration into the broader community (Chapter 4). These factors must too be addressed if offender rehabilitation is to be effective. Further, formal rehabilitative treatment should be followed-up with informal aftercare, in part to reinforce newly acquired skills in a range of settings. Correctional authorities around the Western world have therefore acknowledged the crime reduction benefits of providing specific rehabilitative programming during imprisonment, followed by structured transition in to the community, and treatment and support after re-entry into mainstream society (eg see Motiuk, Boe and Nafekh 2002).

The Relevance of Post-Release Services to Prisoners

Ongoing prisoner treatment and support is not a new concept: correctional practitioners operating four decades ago acknowledged the necessity of prison aftercare. A UK report compiled by the Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders in 1963 highlighted three important trends supporting the provision of prisoner aftercare:

an humanitarian concern for all ex-prisoners
an acknowledgment that supervision at the close of a sentence may effect recidivism, and
recognition that specialist systems of aftercare are needed for various classes of offenders.

Data compiled since that report show that by providing treatment and support after custody and into the community, in-prison rehabilitative gains can be maintained, and the challenges associated with return to the broader community can be eased, both of which will assist in minimising the risk of ex-prisoners re-offending (Cullen and Gendreau 2000). This approach to prisoner treatment has been called throughcare, or a continuum of care. The post-release, community component is variously called aftercare, transitional care, re-entry, reintegration or resettlement (see Chapter 2 for a more thorough delineation of terms).

In addition to humanitarian notions of improving offenders' quality of life, and utilitarian concerns about public safety, other issues are driving the interest in post-release services. For instance, prisons in the USA are becoming increasingly overcrowded as a result of changed sentencing and parole practices, the increased detection of technical violations, and increased sentence lengths (eg Austin 2001; Lynch and Sabol 2001; Travis and Lawrence 2002; Travis and Petersilia 2001). Prison crowding may soon be relevant in Australia. Prisons on average are operating at maximum capacity, and there have been large average increases in both the number and rate of imprisonment across the nation, (see above; Carcach and Grant 1999). The proportion of all Australian prisoners who are held on remand has also increased (see above, Fitzgerald 2000), which is relevant given the difficulties associated with the community return of those imprisoned for only short-terms (see Chapter 4). Measures that seek to stop offenders from re-offending, such as throughcare or post-release interventions, are likely to assist in addressing crowding pressures.

At a more esoteric level, there has been an interest in the process of prisoner re-entry into the community because the experience of certain subpopulations of prisoners can provide important information about the nature of social inequality. The collateral consequences of imprisonment (Chapter 4) have been shown to disproportionately accrue to African American and Hispanic communities in the USA. By examining prisoner re-entry in the context of the whole of society, issues of race and inequity can be studied in detail (Western, Kling and Weiman 2001).

Australian jurisdictions have adopted a range of responses to issues of re-offending and community safety. However, in keeping with international thinking, the Report on Government Services 2003 noted that among the important policy trends observed in Australian corrections,

'Transitional management of prisoners upon release into the community is a major policy focus... This becomes particularly relevant given the trends identified by some jurisdictions in relation to the increasing complexity of prisoner profiles (that is, those with unresolved drug and alcohol issues and backgrounds of social disadvantage, low education achievement, poor employment history, significant health problems including mental illness, and unsatisfactory family and social skills)' (SCRCSSP 2003, p. 7.10).

Stakeholders in the Delivery of Services to Prisoners

Community safety benefits flow on from preventing future crime, and so effective post-release adjustment is of concern to the whole community, and not simply those individuals who have direct contact with the criminal justice system. Indeed, these crime reduction benefits, coupled with the large costs associated with imprisonment, and with crime (Mayhew 2003), mean that post-release issues should be a concern for the whole of government.

The challenges confronting prisoners post-release arise from a complex set of social factors, therefore the means of addressing challenges will be found in social institutions including, but beyond, prisons, courts and law enforcement. Other important stakeholders in the delivery of services and supports for prisoners that have been identified in international literature include:

non-custodial (ie community) corrections
non-correctional government agencies, such as those administering health and education
faith-based and voluntary organisations who can assist in community reintegration
local businesses and industry, and
members of the community where offenders return (eg see Clear and Cadora 2002).

Recent thinking has also emphasised an important role for the victims of crime in the post-release adjustment of offenders. For instance, because victims often know offenders, they can provide information regarding strategies for managing those same offenders in the community (eg Lehman, Beatty, Maloney, Russell, Seymour and Shapiro 2002).

1 After Martinson's (1974) sometimes over-interpreted conclusion following an examination of custodial rehabilitative programming (see Cullen & Gendreau 2000).

2 Some sources use the term "offender" exclusively, to describe inmates held under remand, or those serving community sentences. In this review, the terms prisoner, inmate and offender are used interchangeably, and any references to community correctional clients or remandees is made explicit.

3 This is not intended to discount the important role victims can play in community-oriented approaches to prisoner throughcare (refer Chapter 3). It is included simply to illustrate an approach to corrections that permeates some sections of the media.

4 The time elapsed between prison reception and the earliest possible release date (ABS 2004a).

5 One technique for reviewing the outcomes of multiple studies of the effectiveness of interventions is meta-analysis. This involves creating a common metric that allows quantification of the average effect of a type of intervention on an outcome, relative to some non-treatment option. In the case of correctional treatment, the outcome is usually recidivism. This technique is more objective than literature reviews, although is still subject to limitations (eg see Gaes, Flanagan, Motiuk & Stewart 1999).

6 Not all rehabilitative techniques have the same crime reduction benefits. Effective correctional rehabilitative programs must be appropriate, which means they adhere to a set of general principles that are discussed in detail in Chapter 3.