Convicts in rehab don't reoffend

Prisoners in rehabilitation and reintegration programmes are up to 40 times less likely to reoffend than cellmates left to their own devices.

The Department of Correctional Services has no clear data on how many prisoners reoffend but many experts believe it is between 65% and 85%.

Recidivism for participants in rehab programmes, meanwhile, is often as low as 2%.

“We try and get the client to a point where we change the criminal mind pattern,” said Soraya Solomon, CEO of the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Reintegration of Offenders (Nicro).

Nicro had 9 155 prisoners in its programmes between April 2014 and March this year, but that is only 6% of the average prison population of 153 226 for 2014-15.

Solomon said the programmes were aimed at changing behaviour and were designed as a package which also focused on skills.

Nicro is in the fourth year of a partnership with the Varde Theatre in Norway and they are collaborating on Help I Am Free, a programme offers reintegration through drama and theatre.

Cape Town prisoners in their last year of sentence or their first year of parole are given professional help to create productions and will perform their latest offering, The Making of a Criminal, at Artscape in Cape Town this month.

Former Pollsmoor inmate David Manuel (correct), who took part in the Artscape production in 2014, was cast in the movie Noem My Skollie, released in cinemas last week, as a result of his performance in the show.

Manuel, 37, was released in 2014, two years into a three-year sentence for house robbery, and filmed the movie while on parole last year.

“Every prisoner should do a programme before they leave prison,” he said. “How it helps you depends on you, but there are opportunities. It's very hard [without it] on the outside.”

The Help I Am Free project manager, Ingenbjorg Lingaas, said the rehabilitation process focussed on increasing inmates’ self-confidence and self esteem, but also taught life skills and social skills.

Nine out of 10 people who had been in the programme in Norway had not gone back to prison, but she believed prisoners in South Africa needed more support on the outside to achieve the same results.

“If people are going to meet them with fear they won't feel welcomed or motivated to be in the environment, and will revert back to old behaviours and what they know.”

Lukas Muntingh, from the Dullah Omar Institute at the University of the Western Cape, said too many people, especially youths, were being sent to prison.

Judges and magistrates were not properly informed about prison conditions or alternatives, particularly when handing down sentences of less than two years.

“The overall environment in our prisons is not conducive to rehabilitation or reintegration,” said Muntingh.

“Courts should be far more circumspect before sending someone to prison. Part of the problem is that the alternatives to prison exist in law but are very seldom utilised.”