Community Sentencing Options Need Further Work - Rethinking Project

The Community Sentencing Options announced by government lack imagination, and an understanding of the relationship that needs to exist between offenders and the community in order to reduce offending. The package needs further work to make it more effective. That is the view of Kim Workman, Project Leader, Rethinking Crime and Punishment.

The positive feature of the sentencing package is that it has the potential to keep low-end offenders out of prison, and in the long term should result in reduced offending. It is now universally accepted that the longer we can defer imprisonment, the sooner people will stop offending and become a productive and useful members of society. However, home detention and community detention, on their own, are unlikely to make a lot of difference in the short term, unless there is a commitment to making offenders more directly accountable for their behaviour, and to provide support for change.

On the face of it, the community sentencing package is pragmatic, compliance driven, and efficient. What is now needed is to reshape it so that it makes sense in terms of correctional ideology and theory.

The sentencing package has the following shortcomings:

* The victim has been ignored. There are work schemes and community based programmes overseas, in which offenders work during weekends in government institutions, schools, hospitals, public parks, and are paid a minimum wage. That wage is then paid into a separately administered fund, and reparation paid to their personal victim for harm done. There is an opportunity to build into these sentences, conditions that address the rights of victims. That has not happened.

* The offender is not being held personally accountable. Offenders need to be held accountable to victims, to their families, and to the community for their actions. In other countries, victim-offender conferencing is a funded part of the post-sentence process. Persons released on community work schemes attend facilitated meetings where they are held accountable to either their victims, or the community they have harmed. Such encounters are much more likely to bring about sustainable behavioural change, than being supervised by probation staff. While low-level offenders do not pose a great public safety risk, they are often a community nuisance. Minor burglaries, shoplifting, driving offences, unlawful taking of motor cars, drunkenness and disorder can have a detrimental effect on community well being. Such offenders need to front up before their community, be told how their behaviour affects others, and establish a plan to put things right.

* Surveillance on its own does not produce permanent social change in an offender. The government has funded 300 additional probation officers to ensure sentence compliance. However, the research shows that increased surveillance in the community does not result in a decrease in criminal reoffending, and that the exercise of power and coercion is least likely to bring about internalized change. When the community sentence is over, offenders may well return to the former level of offending. Nor is asking probation officers to be cop and counsellor effective. Funding should be available for community providers to meet offenders needs.

* The sentences as designed, takes part in the community but not with the community. The Community Probation Service is very much in charge. The offender should be hooked up to their community, and be held responsible to it.

What we are starting to see in New Zealand, is the extended social control of offenders by the state, instead of empowering communities to take responsibility for offenders within the community. The following changes need to be made:

* The administration of community work sentences should be contracted to qualified community organisations; Marae, Iwi Authorities, faith based organisations, and community providers. In particular, there should preferably be a connection between the offender and the community in which they live.

* Payback provisions, where offenders are required to work for a minimum wage, with the money paid to their victims as reparation.

* Funded post-sentence restorative justice conferencing, which encourages offenders to confront their victims and community, take responsibility for the harm caused, and agree on a plan to put things right.

* Engagement of the community in the offenders sentence, through community representatives and organisations, so that offenders are challenged to make a more useful contribution to their local community

* Resourcing of community providers to provide ongoing support to community -based offenders, and to ensure that they are held accountable for their behaviour.

What governments need to understand is that they cant make a difference on their own. The best they can do is to support, enhance and work with the organically occurring community processes of accountability, support, reconciliation and earned redemption. When they realise that, and act on it, we are likely to see some improvement in the reoffending figures.

ENDS

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