Community care is it working?

Press, 18 June 1986, Page 19

Community care is it working?

Community care is a new sentence, ushered in by the Criminal Justice Act which became law on October 1. It aims to rehabilitate offenders by offering them support in addressing the root cause of their criminality: treating alcohol and drug problems or building personal confidence and substituting feelings of alienation with feelings of belonging. It is available either to prisoners on parole or when the offence committed is punishable by imprisonment It is intended as an alternative to jail. Behind the initiative is the recognition that prisons are expensive without being effective; that it costs about $25,000 a year on average to keep an inmate and that the reoffending rate is high. Community care sentence is voluntary because it requires from the offender a commitment to change. Programmes are individually tailored and must run for at least six months and no more than 12 months. They are drawn up with the consent of the offender, who must then swear to the conditions in court before being released into the care of an approved sponsor under the supervision, usually indirect, of the Probation Service. Having been sworn to, the programme acquires the status of a contract. If it is breached and that breach is reported, the offender comes back before the Judge for resentencing; that leads, as often as not, to a term behind bars. Essentially the scheme challenges the community to move away from the “lock ’em up” approach and towards an attitude of caring with the emphasis on rehabilitation rather than punishment. The response has been better than expected but patchy; stronger in some areas than others and stronger among Maoris than Europeans. Whakatane, Te Teko and Kawerau — small towns in the eastern Bay of Plenty — have been identified by the Minister of Justice, Mr Palmer, as responding particularly well. PATRICIA HERBERT spent a week there looking at what they are doing and how it is working. She reports.

Community care was anticipated in the eastern Bay of Plenty and existed in surrogate form before the Criminal Justice Act gave it official sanction. This meant they were able to “hit the ground running” and can now boast probably the most vigorous scheme in the country.

That effort can be attributed in large part to the commitment of key figures in the judicial system; particularly- to the District Court Judge, David Wilson, and an area probation officer, Mr John Rabarts.

Judge Wilson set the ball rolling with what was to become a critical test case. He had before him two persistent offenders on “a very nasty assault charge.” Both had spent more time in penal institutions and jail than out and both were leading members of the Kawerau Mongrel Mob chapter. They looked mean. The Judge asked the local Rautahi Maori committee to sponsor them in a community care sentence. The elders were resistant at first, thinking them “too tough to take on,” but were persuaded to accept them. The programme committed them to learning marae protocol and to assisting in tangi and hui; and through their association, others in the Mob became involved. A link was forged which has modified gang activity in the small township.

One of the. two is still In Kawerau, still on the programme, and still going well. The other breached conditions by skipping to Auckland and had to be hauled back for re-sentenc-ing but was only fined. It was found that, although he had not completed the course, he was a reformed character. His attitudes and behaviour had changed for the better, he had dropped his gang associations, he had settled into a steady relationship, and he had found a wellpaying job. It was a gamble choosing two such difficult cases as the guinea pigs and it created some concern among proponents of community care in the region. The senior Maori Affairs district community officer, Mr Henry Pryor, recalls his reservations at the Judge’s choice: “I

felt it (community care) was being programmed for failure with the first two guys but both succeeded.” That success established the credibility of the scheme because, as Judge Wilson had told the Rautahi committee at the outset, if it worked with those two offenders it could work with anyone. Rautahi now has six on the programme and the results have continued to be encouraging. Mr Willy Coates, an elder, says they seem to be keeping out of trouble. He believes the key to rehabilitation is to build up trust and respect. Implicit in the whole maraebased approach is the belief that the high rate of Maori offending stems from a lack of cultural

Identity among the young. Mr Coates says they aim to show offenders that Maoridom wants them and that they have a role to play. “They got lost somewhere. We are bringing them back,” he adds.

There are now 14 marae programmes in the Whakatane-Kawerau-Te Teko area catering for about 20 offenders. It took a lot of leg-work to set them up; most of it done by John Rabarts, much of it in his own time. He first assesses if the offender’s attitude towards offending and towards the law has potential for change, and if this change could be effected by building up a better relationship with Maori culture. Then he takes the offender on

to the marae for a meeting with the elders to see if they can be persuaded to accept one another. This can be a long and delicate process; there are prejudices to be broken down on each side.

The elders are often upset and disgusted by the antics of the offender just as the offender is often arrogant and abusive towards the elders. But, if Mr Rabarts can get them "moving in the same direction” — and he has suceeded in getting a respectable number of maraes to participate — he supervises as the committee and the offender together negotiate a programme.

This done, he presents a report to the Judge, asking that the offender be placed with the marae as sponsor. The Judge reads out the programme in court and the offender undertakes to honour each of its clauses before being released into the community. From there, Mr Rabarts takes a back seat. He monitors progress but through the committee rather than directly with the offender. The idea is to minimise official contact consistent with the philosophy of the sentence.

One of his achievements in the process of setting up the sponsorship network has been to persuade the elders to take responsibility for offenders not of their own tribe; a crucially important flexibility. But the breakthroughs have been achieved only after many lengthy meetings and the effort involved has made nonsense of the 40-hour week and the eight-hour day.

Mr Rabarts has made the sacrifice willingly because he is convinced of community care’s "terrific potential” — and probably also because he is himself a Maori. But the experience has persuaded him, Judge Wilson, and the acting district probation officer in Whakatane, Mrs Joan Clark, that specialist officers should be appointed to administer the scheme full time.

Mrs Clark says that officers have had to cut back their activities because the office is too hard-pressed to cope. Mr Rabarts says that if community care is to achieve all it offers, it must be backed by resources — particularly staff. Apparently,

this was promised but has not been forthcoming. It is important that it should be, not only for probation service morale but also as a declaration of Government commitment. There is a perception abroad that the caring nature of Maori culture is being exploited; that the Maoris are being used. The marae programmes do not require much funding but they save the State thousands of dollars every time they take responsibility for people who would otherwise go to jail. None of these savings are being channelled through to the maraes which are making them possible.

A typical programme requires the offender to:

• Attend a course in personal management and confidence on a fortnightly basis — a brief which can include such skills as reading and writing, budgeting, and making job applications;

• Attend a course each week in spiritual training and marae protocol; • Spend at least eight hours assisting and participating in any hui or tangi held on the marae in the term of the sentence.

In return, the committee undertakes to help find work for those unemployed and to encourage those who have jobs to hold on to them.

The Whakatane office usually has between 20 and 30 people on community care at any one time; generally, two-thirds of them are on marae-based programmes. This is a reflection not of the scheme but of the region. The eastern Bay of Plenty is in many ways distinctive. It combines the third highest unemployment rate in New Zealand with a more than 50 per cent Maori population, a strong Maori culture, and a solid level of gang membership among the young. Black Power dominates in Whakatane, Ruatoki, and Waimana, and the Mongrel Mob in Te Teko and Kawerau.

So community care has tended to develop around the Maori structures already in place — the gangs and the maraes — and has been able to extend its influence beyond the offender by

creating a rapport between the groups rather than between the individual and the sponsor. Nationally, there have been some failures; people who have reoffended in the course of their programme, or even while it was being drawn up, and have had to be sent to jail. But they are outnumbered by the successes. Mr Rabarts quotes the cases of the man who has learned not to beat his wife; of the Mongrel Mob member who still mixes with the Mob but has avoided reoffending; of the gang member who reacted immediately to the marae programme, got the rest of the gang interested, and now wants Mr Rabarts to talk to them about cultural identity and the concepts behind community care.

For the justice system, battling for decades against a high recidivism rate and desperately casting about for new options, these small victories are encouraging. As a consequence, the consensus among those administering the scheme in Whakatane is that it is working well and has an optimistic future.

Of those I spoke to, only the district supervising police officer, Senior-Sergeant Brian Guy, withheld judgment. He accepts that the crime rate has dropped in Whakatane, Te Teko, and Kawerau, but says it is too early to tell whether the drop heralds anything of significance or whether it can be credited to community care.

Indications are that he will require a lot of evidence before he is convinced there is a link. The police see the victims, he says.

What he will not say but what undoubtedly influences his attitude is that it has been galling to

arrest someone for a serious offence, have the charge stick in the courts, and then find the offender back on the streets again — sentenced to a course in Maori culture. Mrs Clark concedes that the general public also has little faith and asks for patience. It is unreasonable to expect a transformation overnight or even in a few weeks, she says. The gang presence has made law and order a hot local issue; as was evident in the petition circulated 'by an anonymous businessman in Opotiki a few months back and sent to the Minister of Police, Mrs Hercus. Clearly there is some distance to go in winning broad acceptance for the scheme. This may be because it is most active and is getting its best results on the marae where there is almost no European involvement. tl Mrs Clark doubts community care’s ability to deliver to the European, saying that European society is “too atomised” — that it lacks the communal nature of Maori society. .- _•... Judge Wilson also confesses to being “worried about where you go with the Europeans,” but suggests there may be a role for the women’s division of Federated Farmers and like groups, perhaps with funding support from the service organisations.

Some Europeans have been put on community care sentences in Whakatane but they are all in drug or alcohol therapy programmes; either receiving counselling through the Kawerau office of the National Society on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency or undergoing treatment in residential centres.