Contents

2 A SURVEY OF POST-RELEASE SERVICES

This chapter summarises aspects of a survey intended to gather information concerning the programs, services and interventions made available to young people leaving detention and adults leaving prisons in Australia.

Australian prisoners appear to face many of the challenges that have been identified as characteristic of prisoners overseas. In some jurisdictions outside Australia, authorities are providing services designed to address these challenges and assist in prisoner reintegration (eg Reentry Partnership Initiatives and Reentry Courts in the US, see US General Accounting Office 2001). Prisoners and young people released from detention in Australia are also receiving services, although the range, content, and the depth of coverage of these services are not known. This research therefore undertook a survey to compile an inventory of post-release services currently available within Australia.

Gathering Information About Post-Release Interventions

The Questionnaire

A questionnaire was developed to elicit information concerning post-release interventions, services and programs. It was intended for all potential service providers catering to adults and young people leaving detention, both government (ie State-based correctional) and non-government, in Australia.

A number of factors had to be considered when compiling questionnaire items. For instance, because the specific types of post-release services in Australia had not been documented previously, this questionnaire aimed to gather only basic information concerning service providers, and the interventions offered. However, the need to collate even basic information had to be balanced with the reality that many service providers operate within severe resource limitations and may not have sufficient resources to complete too detailed a set of questions, or to collate even rudimentary information regarding program delivery and evaluation. Consequently, the number of items was limited to ensure that completing the questionnaire was not too onerous a task. Further, where possible, the items were in a format requiring yes/no responses, or minimal text-based responding.

Preparation for the reintegration process can commence at reception, therefore whether or not a service, program, or intervention is classified as post-release can be open to debate. For instance, it could be argued that any program aimed at addressing physical, emotional, criminogenic or psychological aspects of an incarcerated offender, at any point in their experience with the criminal justice system, is in fact post-release because the aim is rehabilitation and therefore ultimately, reintegration. However, a survey of all interventions was beyond the scope of the current work, therefore criteria for defining post-release for the current purposes were incorporated in the questionnaire. Questionnaire instructions noted that:

To help you decide which of your programs, interventions and services are relevant, we are interested in those:

• that prisoners commence 8 weeks or less before release
• that prisoners commence more than 8 weeks before release, but which are continued up to release or post-release
• that provide transitional support to assist in reintegration, or
• that are delivered to prisoners for any period following release.

A linked issue was the content of interventions. For example, should all in-prison employment - even that which does not imbue new skills or community-relevant experience - be considered a post-release intervention? The decision to include a program would ultimately be that of the service provider, however guidelines to assist respondents to make that decision included:

The areas of interest are:

1. employment - including job preparation and job placement
2. housing - including accommodation placement
3. financial management - including debt reduction and welfare access
4. vocational assistance and training - specifically focused on workplace skills and qualifications
5. minimising reliance on alcohol and other drugs
6. mental and physical health (unrelated to alcohol and other drugs)
7. social networks - including those designed to foster positive community support, for example mentoring schemes or peer support
8. family relations - including parenting training, addressing domestic violence, and other programs designed to sustain positive family relations
9. cognitive skills - such as anger management
10. reducing reoffending - programs specifically designed to minimise reoffending upon release, incorporating programs explicitly targeting criminogenic needs, such as sex offending or violence reduction.

Please do not include programs, interventions or services:

• where the only function is the monitoring or surveillance of prisoners' activities, such as regular reporting
• with very non-specific aims, such as crafts or hobbies, or
• that are no longer being delivered by your organisation.

Finally, because there are multiple jurisdictions in Australia, each employing differing legislation and legislative requirements, terminology, and correctional policies and practices, questionnaire wording had to be suitably generic and sufficiently broad to capture potentially varying concepts.3

Section A of the questionnaire sought organisational and general client information, whereas Section B sought the detail of specific interventions. Section B was uniform among all versions, although variants of Section A were produced. To ensure that the language employed was the same as that used by those who would actually complete the questionnaire, slight variations in wording were made on these master versions at the recommendation of the relevant authorities (eg 'young people in detention' rather than 'prisoner' for juvenile justice authorities). Appendix A contains adult versions of the questionnaire distributed to custodial authorities, community correctional authorities, and non-government organisations (NGOs).

Questionnaire Distribution

As noted above, the questionnaire was intended for all service providers.4 However, given that the extent of Australian post-release services was not known, the range of providers was also unknown. Therefore, chief executives of all State Government correctional authorities responsible for adults and young people were initially invited to participate. Equivalent staff within NGOs known to provide prisoner services, were also approached. Invitations included instructions to contact the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) should organisations wish to take part. In a minority of cases, agencies required that their own ethical approval process be completed before they could take part.

The most appropriate mode of distribution so as to minimise the resource load upon organisations was negotiated with those agencies that replied to invitations. Consequently, some organisations received the questionnaire in printable electronic format, in a mode that allowed electronic completion, or as a hard document. Furthermore, because agencies were best placed to decide the most appropriate staff to provide responses, some organisations chose to distribute questionnaires themselves, whereas others asked that appropriate staff be approached individually by the AIC. In many instances, individuals who were approached directly passed questionnaires on to staff members they deemed more appropriate, or copied the questionnaire to allow it to be passed on to multiple respondents.

All State correctional authorities responsible for adults and young people in detention were initially invited to participate (a total of 14 agencies). Eighteen NGOs (some national, some jurisdictionally-based) were also approached. Initial invitations were despatched in March 2003. Following responses to invitations, questionnaires were sent to individuals within 31 organisations during the period March to September 2003.5

Questionnaire Returns

A 'respond by' date was specified on questionnaires.6 A total of 64 responses detailing interventions were received from individuals within 11 government agencies and 14 NGOs, via fax, post, or electronically. Five incomplete surveys were received, with respondents noting that they either did not provide interventions that corresponded with their understanding of the criteria for post-release services, or were unable to spare the resources to complete the questionnaire. All responses were logged upon receipt, and questionnaire information was entered into Microsoft Access and SPSS databases created specifically for this project.

One hundred and eighty-five programs were described that could be categorised as post-release. An additional 5 programs were described that could be not be classified as post-release in terms of either their content or their timeframe for delivery. These five programs have not been included in any analyses.

In some circumstances post-release programs were documented on multiple occasions because they were jointly administered by multiple agencies, each of who provided information. Still other over-arching programs contained subcomponents that could be seen as programs in and of themselves and that served to address the different areas of interest. Some programs were jurisdiction-wide initiatives, and therefore different sites within jurisdictions reported their own utilisation of a shared initiative. Often the information supplied in duplicate entries varied, reflecting slightly different implementations or interpretations of interventions. When multiple entries were eliminated, a total of 162 programs were detailed.

The (undocumented) copying of questionnaires within participating organisations makes it difficult to calculate an exact percentage of questionnaires returned. However, 72 separate questionnaires were forwarded, and 64 were returned, therefore there was a nominal response rate of 89 per cent. Despite this seemingly high nominal response rate, it is reasonable to assume that Australian post-release interventions were not exhaustively surveyed because:

• some invited organisations did not respond to invitations
• not all despatched questionnaires were returned
• not all despatched questionnaires were completed by those same individuals to whom they were sent
• varying modes of questionnaire distribution for each agency meant that every single correctional facility in Australia was not approached, thus some unique local initiatives will not have been captured
• some agencies, although willing to participate, were unable to complete questionnaires for a variety of reasons (eg lack of staff resources)
• a number of organisations who were not initially invited to take part were listed as partners in service provision on returned questionnaires, but time constraints meant that these previously unknown organisations could not be separately approached
• some surveyed agencies provided only generic information (rather than specific details) concerning the types of organisations they worked with to deliver services
• some previously unknown organisations may not operate in partnership with any of the surveyed agencies and so they have not been identified or approached, and
• as already noted, Australian and State Government departments and agencies responsible for health, education, etc were not approached because a survey of this scale was beyond the scope of this current project.

Lastly, differing definitions of what is understood by post-release services will have influenced what programs were described in returned questionnaires. It is possible that very narrow interpretations of program inclusion criteria may have resulted in the omission of types of services that other respondents with broader interpretations of the criteria may have chosen to report.

3 This instrument was not pilot-tested because of the need to minimise inconvenience for resource-limited organisations. It would be near impossible to design a questionnaire that would perfectly match the language and practices of all providers without gathering feedback on a pilot survey from a sizable proportion of those same organisations that would later be asked to respond to the instrument in some finalised form. As this questionnaire was intended to gather only basic information, it was ultimately deemed uneconomical to finely hone the survey instrument. As such, findings from this questionnaire can form the basis for later work that may seek detailed information regarding 'what works': in effect, this questionnaire may act as a pilot for later research.

4 Government agencies other than State-based correctional authorities can and do assist prisoners in the process of transition from custody to the community. These include housing, health, education, and other human services. The valuable role that Australian Government agencies such as Centrelink play in prisoner re-entry should not be discounted (eg see Centrelink 2003; Homersham and Grasevski 2003), however surveying all Australian Government entities and all State-based Government agencies was beyond the scope of the current work.

5 A subset of (previously unknown) NGOs had been listed as partners in service provision by agencies that completed questionnaires in response to the initial round of invitations. If time permitted, these partner NGOs were also contacted to participate.

6 This varied with agencies because replies to initial invitations were also staggered. In some cases, this date was negotiated with agencies.