NICRO: OFFENDER REHABILITATION AND REINTEGRATION INCORPORATING A RESTORATIVE

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NICRO OFFENDER REHABILITATION AND REINTEGRATION-
INCORPORATING A RESTORATIVE A HUMAN RIGHTS
BASED APPROACH By Venessa C.T Padayachee NICRO
National Programmes Specialist Conference on
Crime and its Impact on Human Rights Ten years
of the Bill of Rights 22-23 March 2007 Sandton,
Johannesburg

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INTRODUCTION

• Crime threatens our democratic gains
• Enormous costs to victims and communities
• Call for tougher penalties and more stringent
  measures
• Long-term crime consequences of not actively
  intervening to address issues confronted by
  offenders
• Reduce likelihood of repeat offending
• Offender rehabilitation broader reintegration
  goals-critical component of comprehensive crime
  prevention strategy
• How does offender rehabilitation and
  reintegration benefit victims and society?
• Complexity of behaviour change
• Offender reintegration social exclusion theory
• Prisons and imprisonment
• A restorative approach
• A rights based approach to offender
  rehabilitation and reintegration

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INTRODUCTION

• Offender reintegration social exclusion
  theory-aim of reintegration programmes should be
  to address the risk factors that cause
  recidivism
• Social and economic environment
• Individual skills and characteristics
• Relationships with individuals and community
• Stigma
• Institutionalization and socialization in prison
  and the
• Physical environment

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INTRODUCTION

• Prisons and imprisonment
• Overcrowding, violence, rape, gangs, corruption,
  drugs, abuse of authority, inappropriate
  recruiting of staff, lack of retraining of staff
• Awaiting trial-review minimum sentencing
  legislation-more non-custodial options
• A restorative approach ( crime is essentially
  conflict that has been stolen from victims,
  offenders, and communities. Many RJ advocates are
  concluding that citizens and community groups
  should take back these conflicts and rediscover
  their capacity to resolve them.
• Offender accountability and responsibility
• Repairing the harm
• Participation of victims
• Community empowerment partnerships
• Informal social control
• Building social capital
• Productive citizen role
• A rights based approach to offender
  rehabilitation and reintegration

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STATUS OF REHABILITATION AND REINTEGRATION
EFFORTS IN SA

• DCS response
• New strategy
•  2 pillars-(1) rehabilitation (ii) correction as
  societal responsibility
• Restorative justice policy
• Trying to regulate who renders services to
  offenders in prisons. Some formal partnerships.
• 6 Key Service Delivery Areas
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•          Correction which aims to address the
  offending behaviour of sentence persons
  (correctional sentence plan, restorative justice)
•          Security which aims at addressing the
  safety of inmates, officials and members of the
  public.
•          Facilities the challenge is to ensure
  that the Department has a long term strategy that
  enables the effective conduct of rehabilitation
  programmes and safe custody in humane conditions.
•          Care Intended to address the
  well-being needs of inmates including access to
  social and psychological services
•          Development aims to provide for skills
  development and utilization in line with
  Departmental and national human rights
  needs(re-training warders-non-therapeutic
  programmes)
•          After Care intended to ensure
  successful reintegration through appropriate
  interventions directed at both the inmate and
  relevant societal institutions

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STATUS OF REHABILITATION AND REINTEGRATION
EFFORTS IN SA

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• Civil society
•  pockets of good initiatives
• -there organizations working in prisons and on
  post release work
• Other
• -poor partnerships between state and civil
  society
• -lack of systematic evaluation and insufficient
  results of impact
• Rehab progammes based on solid evidence?
• lack of sufficient dialogue
• -lack of effective collaboration
• -lack of clarity on roles and delineation of
  service areas etc
• -no national agreed upon standards
• -no accredited training

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NICROs APPROACH Core business working with
adult and youth offenders
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BRIEF BACKGROUND OVERVIEW

• 1910
• Preventing And Reducing Crime Through The
  Rehabilitation Ad Reintegration Of Offenders
• Target group-youth at risk, youth and adult
  offenders, families of offenders, victims of
  crime, Crime Prevention Services
• Direct service delivery, advocacy, training and
  capacity building, research

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HISTORIC ACHIEVEMENTS

• PROBATION SERVICES(1918)
• PRISONERS FRIEND SERVICE(1935)
• COMMUNITY SERVICE (1979)
• JUVENILE JUSTICE-DIVERSION (1992)
• RESTORATIVE JUSTICE (1980)
• VICTIM SUPPORT (LATE 1980S)

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VISION  To build and strengthen a democratic
society based on human rights principles through
crime prevention and development.

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MISSION
  NICRO, as a national non-profit organisation,
regards crime as a threat to democracy and
individual rights. Through people centered
development and services to victims, offenders
and communities NICRO strengthens a human rights
culture and a safer South Africa. To this end
NICRO engages in lobbying and advocacy, capacity
building, direct service delivery and research.
NICRO adheres to the principles of good
governance and sound environmental practices.

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CURRENT-NICRO SERVICES PROGRAMMES

• DIVERSION YOUTH AT RISK
• COMMUNITY VICTIM SUPPORT
• OFFENDER REINTEGRATION
• ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT PROJECT
• ALTERNATIVE SENTENCING PILOT

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• I.                 NEW   The Offender Care
  Programme
• Holistic services are aimed at effectively
  rehabilitating, resettling and reintegrating
  adults and youths/children in conflict with the
  law, while simultaneously providing essential
  support services to their families through
• Comprehensive and effective intake, assessment
  and case management services
• Diversion away from the formal justice system
  into various psycho- educational and
  therapeutic programmes (adult and juvenile
  offenders)
• The provision of various psycho-educational and
  therapeutic programmes and community service
  programmes as non-custodial sentencing
  options
• Holistic and therapeutic rehabilitation and
  re-integration programmes for sentenced
  offenders, a component of which focuses on the
  economic empowerment of offenders, former
  offenders and their families
• The implementation of restorative justice
  interventions

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• I.                     The Offender Care
  Programme
• The provision of various systemic interventions
  to families to
•          Facilitate successful re-integration
  into communities
•          Promote desistence from crime
•          Heighten psycho-social functioning of
  offenders and families
•          Reduce committal of future crime by
  changing the behaviour, attitudes, and/or skills
  of the offender (with a focus on employability
  and economic empowerment)
•          Repair the harm caused to victims and
  communities
•          Build strong value oriented families
•          Build safe communities and
•          Reduce crime levels in South Africa.

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• II The Community Victim Support Capacity Building
  programme
• Toolkit establishment of Community based victim
  support services
• Minimum standards
• Accredited training programme

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KEY INITIATIVES

• ALTERNATIVE SENTENCING CAMPAIGN
• DIVERSION
• TOOLKIT
• MINIMUM STANDARDS DIVERSION
• Assessment Research
• Design and finalization of new programmes strong
  developmental focus-parenting skills, drug abuse
  prevention, family functioning and preservation,
  violent and angry youth, social life skills,
  specialised programme for young sexual offenders
• VICTIM SUPPORT
• BLUE PRINT MODEL FOR VICTIM SUPPORT CENTRES
• TOOLKIT
• MINIMUM STANDARDS
• ACCREDITED TRAINING PROGRAMME
• MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR PERPETRATOR OF INTIMATE
  PARTNER VIOLENCE PROGRAMME
• OFFENDER REINTEGRATION
• o       Babies behind bars research-research
  into the effects of imprisonment on babies
  incarcerated with their mothers.
• o       Evaluation of Prison Art Project-year
  round activity, expansion beyond prison walls

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CURRENT ACHIEVEMENTS INTERNATIONAL

• POLICE HUMAN RIGHTS TRAINING
• DANISH CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
• DIVERSION TRAINING- MALAWI
• TANZANIA UGANDA NEPAL
• KRYGISTAN
• ZAMBIA MALAWI
• NAMIBIA ZIMBABWE SWAZILAND

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CURRENT AND FUTURE PLANS

• CHANGE PROCESS
• REPOSITIONING
• PROGRAMMES
• ORGANISATIONAL RESTRUCTURING

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NEW PROGRAMMES

• Drug and Substance Abuse Treatment Programme
• Adolescent sex offender treatment Programme
• Programme for Maintenance offenders

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KEY ELEMENTS FOR EFFECTIVE OFFENDER
REHABILITATION AND REINTEGRATION
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• Key Elements Of Successful Rehabilitation And
  Reintegration Practice
• Centralized, coordinated approach to tackling
  crime
• Paradigm shift- Crime prevention/reduction
  strategy allocation of resources
• networks, increased dialogue, what works,
  standards
• Rights based approach
• Creating a prison-environment more conducive for
  rehabilitation
• Overcrowding-awaiting trial, review minimum
  sentencing legislation
• Non-custodial responses
• Corruption and abuse of authority
• Rights approach
• Crime and violence-gangs, rape
• training
• Restorative justice
• Successful, safe and timely rehabilitation and
  reintegration
• Offender Assessment
• Structured Offender Reintegration
• Drug Substance abuse programmes
• Community Service
• Community empowerment partnerships

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• Key Elements Of Successful Rehabilitation And
  Reintegration Practice
• Incorporate a Restorative Justice framework
• Individual accountability and responsibility
• Repairing the harm
• Participation of victims
• Community empowerment partnerships
• Informal social control
• Socioeconomic reintegration and the productive
  citizen role
• Integrated approach formalised partnerships
• Planning and continuous evaluation
• Building human and social capital
• Employment skills development
• Community and family relationships
• Research reasons for recidivism and desistance
  (risk and protective factors)
• Register/data base of service providers
• Increased dialogue

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CONCLUSION

• Need to seek approaches that understand crime as
  a threat to community, not just a violation of
  law that demand new efforts to rebuild lives,
  not just build more prisons and that demonstrate
  a commitment to reweave a broader social fabric
  of respect for life, civility, responsibility,
  and reconciliation