Reintegration of released prisoners into the community to create a safer New Zealand community for all

Prisoner Reintegration Services

As you read this text around 8,000 New Zealanders are languishing in jail. Excluding capital costs, each inmate costs the taxpayer around $90,000 a year.

We imprison a higher percentage of our population than any advanced nation except America. Our prison population is equal to the size of a small town like Stoke or Stratford.

This year about 9,000 prisoners will be released into the community. That’s, on average, more than 21 a day. But within three years around half (44%) will re-offend and be sent back to jail. The single best way to reduce crime is to help released prisoners not to re-offend. Pathway’s strategy is based around how that may be achieved. Stated briefly, we believe that safer communities can be created and criminal re-offending can be greatly reduced if people and organisations with good reputations, good systems, and good connections, work together on a 5-point plan that we term a Total Reintegration Strategy

Total Re-integration Strategy (TRS) for reintegration of released prisoners provides:

Statistics suggest that children of parents who are offenders are six to seven times more likely than their peers to become offenders themselves.

“The Pathway Trust re-integration plan represents one of the most comprehensive, multi-modal approaches to the complicated work of ex-prisoner resettlement that I have seen. By incorporating elements of restorative justice, supported employment, traditional social work and circles of support, the Trust should be able to comprehensively meet the multi-faceted needs involved in the re-integration process better than any single-strategy approach”

(Shadd Maruna, Ph.D., author of Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives.)