Experts: Rehabilitate SoE detainees to prevent crime surge

JENSEN LA VENDE

Senior Reporter

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To prevent an upsurge in criminal activity following the release of more than 500 people detained without charge during the State of Emergency (SoE), Sean De Mills says the State must now focus on rehabilitation and reintegration programmes.

“I believe the prisons are underfunded, understaffed and overcrowded. They do not have the resources to do exactly what we are speaking about here. So people come out of the system worse than they went in. They come out angry. They come out hurt. They come out recognising that, in some cases, their families have moved on.”

De Mills argued that many detainees were held without charge and are being released into a society that has already branded them criminals. Some, he said, have lost their jobs, reputations and support systems, increasing the risk that they may turn to crime.

“Again, there needs to be funding for social programmes outside the prison service, within communities, targeted at specific groups to give people the opportunity to change and make that transition. If we do not do that, we are going right back in circles, possibly to another SoE when crime surges again,” he said.

De Mills said some former detainees may now feel alienated from the State and distrustful of its institutions. He added that the detention and subsequent release of 564 people without charge also raises questions about public confidence in the police service.

“The wider society will have to ask hard questions about our strategy when it comes to policing. If people are taken into State custody and not charged, can we trust the police? Can we trust the system that is supposed to protect and serve?”

He also said members of the protective services who were detained and later released without charge may face additional scrutiny from colleagues upon their return to duty.

Prison reform activist and president of the Wishing for Wings Foundation, Debbie Jacobs, said detainees, although kept separate from remand prisoners and convicted inmates, still experienced the trauma of incarceration and now face the stigma associated with their detention.

“We have this very broad and mistaken belief that once you end up in prison in this country, you must be guilty of something. From my 18 years involved in prison reform, I can personally say, and the courts have demonstrated, that this is not always the case. Being detained under the SoE carries a stigma. It has to be confusing, traumatic and disheartening. It also has the potential to undermine trust in the political process,” Jacobs said.

Like De Mills, Jacobs called for sustained rehabilitation programmes within the prison system to help former detainees reintegrate successfully into society and reduce the likelihood that resentment over their treatment will contribute to future offending.