Salvation Army report highlights housing as key driver of prisoner reoffending in New Zealand
Chelsea Daniels interviews Salvation Army Social Policy Mission Officer Ian Hudson about why New Zealand's reintegration system is failing released prisoners.
Summary
Chelsea Daniels speaks with Ian Hudson from the Salvation Army about a new report examining why New Zealand's reintegration system is failing released prisoners. More than 43% of people released from prison return within two years, and almost two-thirds reoffend. The report focuses on accommodation as the foundational pillar of successful reintegration, arguing that without stable housing, none of the other supports — employment, education, family connection, wellbeing, or life skills — can take hold. Hudson outlines a series of practical barriers facing released prisoners, including uncertainty about release dates, lack of ID, a two-week stand-down before benefits, and a Steps to Freedom grant of just $350 that has not been increased since 1991. The Salvation Army is calling for accommodation coordinators inside prisons, better information provision, pre-release ID and benefit setup, and a bond bank system to help prisoners secure housing before they are released.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Chelsea Daniels: A new Salvation Army report is putting a spotlight on why an alarming number of ex-prisoners go on to reoffend. In New Zealand, more than 43% of people released from prison end up back there within two years. Almost two-thirds reoffend. The Salvos reckon more focus is needed on reintegration services to make sure people return to the community with stability, support, and resources. Today on The Front Page, Salvation Army Social Policy Mission Officer Ian Hudson is with us to discuss why our current system is failing to build the home base that so many people need to break the cycle of re-imprisonment for good.
The six pillars of reintegration
So Ian, tell me about these six pillars of reintegration. What are they?
Ian Hudson: They're a model that's been developed by Corrections to cover all of the things that would help to make a successful reintegration of prisoners into the community. We think they're a good model. Those pillars are accommodation — which is what this particular report focuses on — but there's also oranga, or wellbeing, which can cover addictions, mental health, anything around that end. There's education and training. There's employment. There's family and community support. And then there's skills for life. For a lot of people who are in prison, many of them actually don't have a lot of those things in place, and being released straight out into the community without some kind of support in those areas can quickly lead to returning to reoffending.
Barriers to finding accommodation after release
Chelsea Daniels: How hard is it to find accommodation for people released from prison at the moment?
Ian Hudson: There are a lot of obstacles in the way. If you think of it from a prisoner's point of view — they're in prison, and sometimes they don't know what date they're going to be released. About 40% of the people who are in prison at the moment, just over, are on remand. Sometimes they won't know until sentencing how long they're in there, and sometimes they're released on the day of sentencing in what they call a time served. So they can't prepare for that. Unless they've got family waiting for them, those people haven't got a plan, haven't had time to join the dots and get everything sorted. That's one obstacle — some people just don't know when they're going to be released, and when they are, sometimes it's all of a sudden.
But even if they do know, it's hard to organise housing from prison because you haven't got a network and you don't know how to connect with people. Studies have shown that quite a few prisoners don't have a clue where they're going much before they're actually released. And the obstacles once they are released are quite substantial anyway, because some of them don't have ID. No ID means no bank account. No ID means that if you need to go to MSD — and probably you haven't managed to get employed from prison, so you're unemployed and you need income — without ID you can't get a benefit. You'd already be on a two-week stand-down anyway, and all you'd be released with is a Steps to Freedom grant of $350, which has been the same for over 20 years. I think since 1991 or something. It's $350. It's not going to get you far.
Chelsea Daniels: No. And it sounds like prisoners are just set up to fail. There's a University of Auckland study mentioned in the report showing that people in unstable housing are 4.6 times more likely to be re-imprisoned. Is this mainly a supply problem — not enough houses — or is it also the stigma from landlords that people have to go up against?
Ian Hudson: I think it's a combination of all those things. Obviously at the moment we know we're in a housing and homelessness crisis, and prisoners won't be number one on the list. We're doing other work around homelessness, and we had a meeting with a group of people discussing why homelessness was increasing. I'm not saying that people released from prison were huge contributors, but they were one of the contributing factors to the homelessness we have in this country. Even when someone has support from somebody helping them find a house, that person doing the support sometimes encounters resistance from landlords to taking a prisoner in. So even with support it's difficult, but if they're trying to do it on their own — which many of them will be — it's pretty hard to get out there and make it work.
Chelsea Daniels: I mean, I'm going back to the time when I had to move out and I found it really difficult to get a place. I remember going to these flat viewings, and finally one landlord called me back and I could have cried. That much of a relief. And the bond certainly wasn't $350.
Ian Hudson: On top of that, if you don't mind me saying — you look like a person who would be much more likely to get a place. If you come out with tattoos, or arguably if you're Māori, or even if you don't look like that but people know you've got a prison record, it's a mark against you. It just makes it a thousand times harder.
The bond bank proposal
Chelsea Daniels: The Salvation Army is advocating for something called a bond bank. How would that system work, and why isn't the state already providing something like this?
Ian Hudson: The report outlines that in some detail. The idea is that it would be worked out between MSD, the government, and the person being released. Parolees are in a similar situation to people on remand in that they might be released at the parole hearing but might not know for sure beforehand. If you go to a landlord and you don't know the date of your release and you can't tell them whether you've got the money — because of all the other obstacles — then it's very difficult. The idea is that it's set up so that it comes out of their payment retrospectively. They pay it back, but it's a loan that's arranged so that they can actually line up some sort of housing before they leave, with some money behind them, because obviously if you don't have money, no landlord is going to help you.
Some of our services — we do have reintegration services, and other programs that take released prisoners — sometimes have to do a lot of this work, carrying the can, if you like, until it gets sorted, and hopefully get back-paid for accommodating the person in the meantime.
The Steps to Freedom grant and the need for societal change
Chelsea Daniels: You mentioned the Steps to Freedom grant of $350. It's been that amount since 1991 — 35 years. Do you think there needs to be a societal shift in how we think about prisoners and ex-prisoners? Because we're quite keen to have conversations about locking people up, especially in election years. But the conversation seems to die out once they're in prison — how we rehabilitate prisoners, which costs money — and then it falls off the plate even further when we think about reintegrating them into society. Should we be thinking more about the prisoner as a person, rather than what they've done — the worst thing they've done?
Ian Hudson: Absolutely. If you read the report, we've included a few stories, and you can see how, for many people, there are so many different things that have contributed to why they've offended. In recent times we had the abuse in care inquiry, and in some cases people who are in prison have experienced trauma and all sorts of other things that have contributed to why they've offended. Some of them need support to actually deal with those things.
One of the people I quote in the report is a manager of a service we have, who talks about how, sitting there in the service, people get to face and deal with some of the deeper things that are transformational. Some of them have recycled through prison numerous times but have never been able to deal with those underlying issues. In a safe environment they can face it and work their way through it, and it's transformational. That's the kind of thing that people need to think about when we're looking at releasing prisoners, because just warehousing them in prison and then releasing them back — I think 90% of prisoners probably want to live a better life. They don't want to go back to prison, but they don't know how, in many instances, to deal with the stuff that's happening for them, because it's kind of deep and they don't really know what it is in some cases.
I think we do need to think of them as a person and see how we can turn that around, because it's not only about them. Some people would say, "Oh, it's all for the offender — what about the victim?" Well, I think we need to care more about victims, but it's not one versus the other. And often the offender has been a victim themselves, and this is all part of a cycle that we need to try to break.
How New Zealand compares internationally
Chelsea Daniels: How does New Zealand compare internationally when it comes to reintegration support? Are there any other countries doing it better?
Ian Hudson: Countries in Scandinavia do a lot more reintegrative work and provide more support for prisoners, and they probably don't imprison at the same rate anyway. Some countries do it worse than us — I'm not sure the US is a good place to look to. We've got such a high imprisonment rate compared to other Western countries, apart from the US. It's a bit of a worry that we've got this increasing prison population, because in time a lot more people will be released. And if we don't release well, all we'll be doing is recycling people back again. So it's really important to deal with these things.
Chelsea Daniels: Every part of the corrections budget will have gone up since 1991. The CEO of Corrections — that salary has gone up by over $300,000 since the mid-90s. How is it okay that the grant hasn't moved?
Ian Hudson: I guess we're pragmatists and we work with what we've got. I've heard the argument that these people don't want the help, that they just go out and don't want to better themselves. But if you've ever had a conversation about addiction and how someone ended up in prison in the first place — if they don't receive treatment for addiction in prison or directly afterwards, then once they get out into the world, the first thing they're going to think of is picking up. So we're setting them up to fail. Of course they struggle to better themselves in that moment, because they haven't been given the tools. It's a catch-22 situation. We've put them in prison, told them they've done a bad thing, then sent them out into the world with $350 and hopes and dreams, basically. Show me a person who can get accommodation in Auckland or Wellington with $350 in their pocket. You can't do it.
Chelsea Daniels: No.
Ian Hudson: And I think what this report is trying to say is that if people don't have a good, secure home base, pretty much all of the other pillars can't be worked on. That's why we've focused so much on housing this time — it's the first one, but it's also the fundamental one. If you don't get that right, everything else struggles.
Sometimes you need to do two things at the same time, because some people — it's a bit like our homelessness work — have got mental health issues and addiction issues, and they can't sustain a tenancy because they can't deal with those things. But you can use release as an opportunity to give people the chance to work on these things.
At the moment, the way it tends to work — and we don't want to blame Corrections for this, because with the numbers in prison it's probably quite hard for them to achieve all of this and they're probably not adequately funded or resourced — but between MSD, health, and all the different parts and services, somehow we need to join them up better so that when someone leaves prison, they've got the opportunity to really set themselves up properly. Maybe connect with their family, because some of them have burnt bridges and some haven't, but they need to find a community they can connect to. And it all starts with having some secure place to launch from.
Practical changes the Salvation Army is calling for
Chelsea Daniels: What do you think are the most practical changes that could make a difference? What could we do, say, tomorrow? I'm giving you a magic wand, Ian.
Ian Hudson: We would like there to be accommodation coordinators connected to the prisons who actually work through some of that stuff for people, so that they can get into housing and smooth the way. Things like transitional housing could be connected up with that sort of thing if the right connections were going on between people, because there are different types of housing needed. Those kinds of programs could help, but you need someone in the prison to help connect people up to them, because many of them just don't get that chance.
I also think that information about housing that's available needs to be provided to everyone — they need good information about what's available, what processes they need to go through, and what help they can get, not just for them but for their family as well, because a lot of them don't really know when they're in prison where they can go looking or who might help them.
We think that assessments should take place at some point about what kind of housing someone needs, including more supportive accommodation, because that would pick out whether someone has mental health issues or should do some sort of addiction course. There's a whole range of different things in there.
And obviously, having ID all sorted when you leave prison, having maybe already connected to MSD for benefits, an increase in the Steps to Freedom grant — a significant increase. If they could have their bank account set up before they leave, those are just basic things that would make it so much easier for them to get a fast start, really.
Chelsea Daniels: Thanks for joining us, Ian.
Ian Hudson: Thank you for the opportunity to talk.