Former inmates in recreation cycle-breaker

Press, 8 October 1988, Page 21

Former inmates in recreation cycle-breaker

It was a normal summer’s day for Terry Easthope, a probation officer. After spending the morning pumping iron, his group of ex-inmates were burning off excess energy on a run through the wooded lanes of Hagley Park. Sweat glistened on heavilytattooed muscles of the former prisoners. To puffing, flabby businessmen on the lunch-time circuit, these 12 fierce joggers probably looked like a collection of rehabilitated Rambos. Not the sort you would expect to be doing anything healthy.

To the members of the crack team policing unit, also out for a jog, it was one reunion they never expected. They were even more surprised to find their old adversaries running in the same direction in broad daylight. Easthope’s “Dirty Dozen” recognised their former foes ahead, so they quickly picked up the pace. They passed the boys in blue T-shirts, leaving the law well behind to work out the strangest identification parade it had probably ever seen. These days, under recreational programmes devised by Terry Easthope, some ex-inmates are no longer on the run from the law, but are running for themselves.

Graeme Dingle may have grabbed the news media spotlight as his young offenders traversed New Zealand recently, but Easthope has been quietly fuelling a rehabilitation revolution in Christchurch for some years. “Growth through challenge” is what he stresses in outdoor activities designed to help offenders find a way back into the community. Liverpool-born Easthope is

softly spoken, his accent muted by years of travel. His gentle manner belies a toughness that has turned the most hardened inmates into reasonable, responsible people.

A former Outward Bound instructor with 10 years experience at Anakiwa and similar centres in Britain and the United States, he joined the probation office 11 years ago. His first schemes involved some casual rock climbing using borrowed gear. The impact of these on an offender’s confidence suggested real value from more intensive programmes.

The main impetus came with the 1985 Criminal Justice Act. It placed responsibility for prisoner rehabilitation on the community, with community funding to play a major role. It allowed prisoners to be released during the last six to 12 months of their sentences to take part in approved programmes in the community.

Terry Easthope saw the Salisbury Street Foundation as the right vehicle for his rehabilitation through recreation programmes. The foundation was established in 1978 as a half-way house for offenders. It is owned by the Justice Department and funded by community groups. When he joined Salisbury Street as director in 1986, seconded from the probation office, Easthope supplemented

MIKE JASPERS finds a group of former prisoners no longer on the run from the law, but running for themselves in recreational activities at the core of the Salisbury Street Foundation rehabilitation programme.

the traditional therapy programme with an Encounter Recreation programme. Activities included kayaking, rock climbing, tramping, rafting, diving and cycling. Today, recreation has become the core of Salisbury Street’s activities, and a testimony to its abilities to overcome the problems prisoners face on release. It was the first such centre in New Zealand to adopt recreation as its main programme.

Easthope says the foundation’s work is critically important for rehabilitation, unlike prisons, which he says are degrading and do nothing to equip an offender for life outside.

“What Salisbury Street has done is to allow them to run within a framework. They can run down a corridor, bounce from wall to wall, and learn without actually breaking the law. If you throw in some recreation, you give them reasons as they bounce and test themselves.” One man who has bounced and learned is Ken Turner. A former resident and now a qualified instructor and current director of Salisbury Street, he helped Easthope establish the programme. There is a certain toughness about the wiry, lean Turner and there should be. He’s done a long “lag" himself and knows the problems released prisoners encounter.

“People come out of eight to 10 years jail feeling worthless. They feel they are on the bottom of the heap. They’ve got no purpose. You’ve got to raise their level of self-worth,” he says.

Turner and Easthope agree that raising a person’s confidence and self-esteem is critical. Pitting offenders against unfamiliar obstacles helps them learn to cope better in difficult situations. It gives goals and achievements to people who have never really completed anything while channelling their aggression and energy in a more positive way. Ken Turner says success lies in reducing a person to his fundamental self.

“You’re putting them into an environment where they don’t feel comfortable, or confident in, and therefore they have to start looking at themselves and make themselves feel confident from within.

“It’s taking off that leather jacket which makes them feel confident, and makes them feel who they are and feel good about it.”

Even the toughest can be bent, he says. “You take the biggest guy in the jail and put him at the end of a rope rock climbing, and he loses all his mana. His tough guy image is not worth an ounce of shit because the guy is scared stiff and screaming.”

It is this unfamiliar outdoor

environment which makes for a strong discipline and allows frustrations to be absorbed in a less harmful way. “People say there’s too much freedom and you need the restriction of the prison walls, but the environment itself really gives more control and supervision than a lock-up,” says Easthope. It is not just about challenging offenders, though. They are taught to enjoy the outdoors, and for many it can be a difficult experience. Their only stimulus may have been through drugs, crime or violence. The chance to mix with “straights” and learn critical social skills is also important. Terry Easthope recalls ski-ing and forcing each group member to ride the T-bar with a member of the public. “They had to talk and they couldn’t swear. You can’t prefabricate that. It’s the kind of thing you try years to achieve with group work and videos.” Ken Turner admits that recreation is hard work. First, the offenders have to adjust to life at Salisbury Street. “It’s difficult for them because the day they move in here you take away all their support systems: drugs and alcohol. You’re asking them to throw away all their crutches, and telling them to wait awhile until they can build up other ones.”

Recreation itself does offer offenders a real incentive to change, he says. Using traditional therapy to offer them a change in lifestyle is not enough. “You have a welfare system giving all the money and drugs you need. Why should you change?” Salisbury Street’s recreation programme occupies residents for two full days a week, together with several hours of gym work on other days. It is supplemented by traditional therapy groups, individual counselling and the teaching of social and educational skills, including an anger management course.

Longer expeditions are part of the course, and the stress these days is on triathlons. A variety of activities keeps group interest up over several days. Ken Turner has taken groups on coast-to-coast adventures combining kayaking, cycling and tramping, and has organised similar events over Mount Herbert, Banks Peninsula, and Mount Fyffe, near Kaikoura.

These events can transform even the most hardened types, says Easthope. “At the time when you hit Sumner Beach after a coast-to-coast, with quite a heavy crew as far as prison time goes, and you see them cheering and a few tears streaming down their cheeks, you’ve really cracked it then.”