Life beyond bars: Former prisoners share their stories as Albany service drives push for systemic change

An Albany organisation is reinventing prisoner reintegration in Australia, where each prisoner costs taxpayers $330 a day and nearly half of them are back behind bars within two years of their release. Today, former prisoners share their stories as they join the push for systemic change. “I have a job, I am clean, I am out of trouble and I think once I get a house, everything is going to fall into place and life will be normal. “That’s just all anybody wants — just to feel normal.” These are the words of Justine Williams, a former prisoner who has been fighting to rebuild her life for the past two years. Today, the 39-year-old is hopeful about her future, after recently graduating from a Goldfields drug rehabilitation program. She is a far cry from her former self, a woman sleeping rough on the streets of Perth and in the iron grip of addiction after battling homelessness since the age of 11. In the depths of her addiction, she turned to stealing and was sentenced to 2.5 years prison for a third-strike burglary offence in 2018. Since her release in May 2020, Ms Williams has been looking for a job and a permanent place to call home in Albany, wanting a fresh start for her children. “I just want to feel normal and do normal things,” she said. “Not to be one of these people feeling lost with nowhere to go, and you don’t know where your place is in the world and you are lost on the streets back to doing drugs and stealing. “I would never want to go back to prison.” Last month, Ms Williams was employed for the first time since she was 18. “You are training your mindset to think ‘I do have help, I can do this’,” she said. “That is one of the things that keeps you going — because it is a battle every day. “And just to have the focus of wanting to change your life for your children or your family members, and for them to see that you are worth what you want to be worth.” The road to freedom can be a lonely, uphill slog for recently released prisoners. In Australia, 46 per cent of released prisoners will re-enter prison within two years, according to the Australian Government Productivity Commission. This cycle of institutionalisation can start as young as 10 in Australia. And the nation’s prison population continues to climb. The most recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed there were 42,506 people behind bars in Australia at the end of September — 6608 of them in WA. Despite a downward trend in 2019-2020, the national imprisonment rate has increased by 35 per cent since 2000. In Albany — home to WA’s only regional maximum-security prison — Pivot Support Services works with prisoners before and after they are released to re-enter the community. But Pivot chief executive Ian Neil said the odds were stacked against clients before they stepped outside the prison gates, with the basic needs of finding a home and a job often the biggest roadblocks to reintegration. Both are made even harder by the stigma of time spent on the inside. “Life as a prisoner when you’ve got that tag is very, very difficult,” Mr Neil said. Until late last year, Pivot had just two homes to provide to recently released prisoners through the Department of Communities. But it had to hand back the properties because of ongoing maintenance costs the service could not cover. Amid a relentless rental crisis in the Great Southern, Pivot has resorted to handing out swags and tents. “If you put a roof over someone’s head, everything else seems to fall into place if they’ve got support,” Mr Neil said. Albany man Shane King, 56, is no stranger to the revolving door of the State’s custodial system. Since entering the system as a teenager, Mr King has been in and out of prison several times. In between stints, he has lived on the streets, in a car, and in a tent in the bush. There were times over the past eight years since being released when life on the outside just got too much for Mr King and he begged to go back to prison “I was telling them ‘I’ve had enough. Lock me back up.’ Living on the streets was harder than prison,” he said. With help from Pivot, Mr King secured a home, but it took six years. “I cried when I first got into my house and had a shower,” he said. Mr King has vowed never to go back. “I don’t even think about it. I’ve got myself off the street. And now these fellas have got me working to keep these blokes out of jail,” he said. “If I can do it, they can do it. “Thirty-five years in that system .... it’s just a waste of decades.” Albany man Kevin Fry has been trying to help people stay out of prison after spending 20 years behind bars for murder. Known as “Mouse”, Mr Fry gets up almost every day at 5am, using a sewing machine to craft bags he sells at the local markets. Mr Fry serves as a Pivot board member and has built his own business using the skills and savings he acquired during his time in prison. “If you haven’t got the money to stay out of prison, you just might as well get a brick, go down to the police station and throw it through a window,” he said. “You make sure you have a job, you make sure you have got somewhere to live — it’s up to you if you want to stay out of prison or not.” As the number of prisoners continues to climb, so does the cost to the Government and community. Australian taxpayers spent more than $5 billion on prisons in 2020, or more than $330 per prisoner per day, according to the Productivity Commission — money that could be better spent on reducing rates of reoffending and rehabilitating former inmates, Mr Neil says. He said the WA Government spent about $1b a year on prisons, of which less than $16 million was allocated to seven services that focused on reintegration, such as Pivot. He said Pivot received about $900,000 to run its operations. “So that’s a drop in the ocean, and there is an opportunity to do so much more,” he said. For the past three years, Pivot has been taking a new approach to keeping people from entering or re-entering prison through its Great Southern Community Hub. Through in-house services and referrals to other local services, Pivot is working to target the disadvantage that increases the odds of incarceration. “Evidence and experience have shown me that prisons don’t work, they are not set up for rehabilitation,” Mr Neil said. “From the disadvantage comes prisoners, they go to prison, when they are released, where do they go? Back to the disadvantage, but they are more disadvantaged now as they face the stigma of being a prisoner.” A 2018 report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare which surveyed inmates at 62 prisons across Australia found people in the criminal justice system faced higher rates of homelessness, unemployment and poorer physical and mental health than the general population. Just over half of those surveyed were unemployed when entering prison, about a third were homeless, and 40 per cent reported a previous diagnosis of a mental health condition, including alcohol and other drug use disorders. About 73 per cent had been previously incarcerated, and more than a third were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people — despite representing just 3 per cent of the overall population. Mr Neil said the hub — which serviced 434 people last year — was open to anyone in crisis or facing disadvantage, including recently released prisoners. It includes crisis accommodation, mental and physical health support, disability support, employment and education, legal representation, and relationship counselling. Mr Neil said with more funding, Pivot hoped to establish a community centre to house the services. “There needs to be a cultural shift in the community to look at things differently,” he said. “And what we are trying to do through our community hub is not to label people as prisoners — to label them as disadvantaged. “This is generational change. “It will take years, but it has to start somewhere.” Deakin University Emeritus Professor Joe Graffam said driving down Australia’s prison population would require a whole-of- community approach and for leaders to commit to change over more than one term of government. “What we see is that people carry a criminal record with them for the rest of their life ... it touches all sorts of aspects of life, after they have paid the price,” he said. Professor Graffam said Pivot’s approach to tackling disadvantage and recidivism was not being done anywhere else in Australia. He believes it should be replicated “around this country and elsewhere”. “From my point of view this is not just an effective means of helping people extract themselves from the criminal justice system and find a way into mainstream community life, but it is a way of solving long-term, chronic, entrenched, intergenerational disadvantage,” he said. A WA Department of Justice spokesman said the DOJ was reviewing its contracted rehabilitation and reintegration programs, including transitional housing services. “While the department does not have its own housing stock, the review will include consideration of housing services and solutions to support reintegration for ex-prisoners, and the department will continue to work with the Department of Communities and service providers regarding this matter,” he said. The spokesman said the DOJ provided a “range of rehabilitation and reintegration programs and services”, both in custody and in the community. “This includes the direct provision of rehabilitation programs delivered by the department, as well as programs and services delivered by contracted non-government organisations,” he said. “Such services address a range of issues for offenders such as short-term accommodation needs, health, education, vocational training, life skills, emotional wellbeing, alcohol and other drug issues, and family and domestic violence. “As a part of the recommissioning project, work will be undertaken to consider how rehabilitation programs and reintegration services are meeting current needs, in turn informing future commissioning processes.”