New Zealand has recently recorded its highest-ever prison population – surpassing the previous record of 8457 set in September 2007. Our country has the second-highest imprisonment rate in the developed world, behind only the United States.
According to the Department of Corrections, research shows that imprisonment doesn’t reduce the chance someone will re-offend. About 68 percent of released prisoners are reconvicted within four years of release. But a Biblically based restorative justice programme is making a difference.
Amanda Wells reports on the Sycamore Tree.
The Sycamore Tree, a restorative justice programme run by Prison Fellowship New Zealand, aims to make offenders take responsibility for the impact their crime has had on its victims.
It does this through bringing together six prison inmates and six people from the community who have been victims of crime; these victims are unconnected to the specific offences of the six inmates. They spend eight two-hour sessions together over the course of two weeks, working through ideas of empathy, forgiveness and justice, culminating in each person telling their own story to the group.
Janet Sim Elder, a Presbyterian elder who facilitates the Sycamore Tree at the Otago Correctional Facility near Dunedin, says the programme forces inmates to confront the idea that their actions have consequences.
It’s being run in 11 prisons around New Zealand, with between 30 and 35 courses being delivered every year.
The programme belongs to Prison Fellowship International and was developed in the United States, though it has been significantly rewritten to fit the New Zealand context.
In June 2009, Prison Fellowship published an evaluation of outcomes for the 361 inmate participants in the Sycamore Tree since 2004. Because most are still in custody, re-offending cannot yet be measured, but the evaluation shows very significant changes in terms of inmates’ attitudes. Prisoners are given a questionnaire before and after participating in the programme that gauges five different attitudes, including their general attitude to offending, how much they perceive their crime to have hurt their victim, and how worthwhile they believe a life of crime to be.
On average, significant shifts are recorded across all attitudes.
Jackie Katounas, Prison Fellowship’s manager of restorative justice services, says the Sycamore Tree has exceeded Corrections’ expectations.
“It’s staggering the change that’s happening in people through this programme.
“Generally prisoners and offenders don’t personalise crime. If they have an opportunity to hear that heart-wrenching trauma [from victims], we hope that makes a world of difference as to whether they would offend again.”
The programme is funded by private donations and grants from funding bodies.
Janet Sim Elder facilitates the Sycamore Tree at the Otago Corrections Facility near Milton. Janet, who is also an elder at Dunedin’s Knox Church, describes the programme as “very intense work”.
She has run five courses since March 2008, and says Corrections staff have told her they notice a big difference in the inmates who participate.
“For many of the guys it’s the first time they have ever confronted the kind of impact their actions have had on other human beings.”
As well as using the questionnaires to record attitude change, Janet interviews each participant before and after the programme. Some of their comments are extraordinary, she says.
One offender told her, “I’ve learned what forgiveness is about. I’ve learned that it is a way of life. It stops the fights. [Other inmates] are asking what’s happened to me.”
Janet says offenders often think that their crimes don’t hurt anyone, or that the victims asked for it. “We challenge these thought patterns.”
The hardest part, she says, is finding people from the community who have been victims of crime and who would like to participate.
The community participants are given a good idea of what to expect before they participate in the programme, including briefings on the experience of going inside the prison and the security measures taken to protect them. Janet describes them as “an amazing, courageous bunch of people.”
“They want to make a difference but they get stuff out of it too.”
Mary (not her real name), a community participant, says she found the programme “really worthwhile”.
She had experienced violent crime many years ago, but was confident that she had dealt with it and moved on.
When participating in the programme, “my biggest surprise was to realise deep down that I’m still affected by it”.
“When I relived the experience [in front of the group], it brought back all the trauma.
“My story was quite powerful, in that they saw it could still affect you even though it was a long time ago; that it actually stayed with you.”
Mary was buddied up with the inmate sitting next to her, who happened to have committed a violent crime. “I tried to tell him that change wasn’t insurmountable. That it was achievable… I said to him, ‘we’re all sinners’.”
She says it became apparent that the man had never thought of forgiveness in the way that it was presented in the programme. “He apparently became transformed [afterwards]”.
Janet says community participants are often shocked when the inmates start to talk about the type of upbringing they have had.
“The tragedy is that we have people in prison who have been hugely victimised themselves. The community people note that every time. The sort of childhoods they say they have had have been horrendous; the parenting they have had is nonexistent.”
Jackie Katounas describes the Sycamore Tree as “victim-based process. Victims get the chance to tell an offender the pain they’ve caused”.
“It’s not a soft process; it’s tough for both offenders and victims to do.”
Jackie says it can and does turn around the lives of victims, as well as offenders.
“Victims have got to be given a voice. They continue hurting when they’re not heard.”
At the heart of the programme is the concept of forgiveness, which our society finds difficult to associate with crime, she says.
“Forgiveness isn’t something that happens overnight. And it may never happen for some people at all, but it’s an opportunity for this to occur.
“We don’t often talk about forgiveness in our own communities; it seems too hard. But it’s the forgivers who receive the gift of freedom and letting go.”
Janet says that people who have been victims of crime often struggle with fear. “They want to face their demons; they’ve been dealing with these demons for years. [After the programme] people are saying, ‘this is what’s turned my life around’.”
Both Janet and Jackie talk of the effect that media coverage of violent crime has had in creating and feeding community fear.
Jackie says, “our country has become obsessed with punishment”.
The context of the Sycamore Tree is explicitly Christian, and nearly all the community participants hear about the programme through churches or other Christian connections.
“We always open with all 12 people in prayer,” Janet says. “At the end, we all hold hands and pray as we go.” Even inmates who have negative initial reactions to prayer end up commenting on its calming effect, she says.
The Bible is the heart of the programme, specifically the stories of Zacchaeus (see below), David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11ff), and the beginning of Joseph’s story (Genesis 37).
Janet says Knox Church has been very supportive of her work, providing gifts at Easter of a flax cross, chocolate eggs and small card to everyone at the Otago Corrections Facility. The 400 crosses were made by the congregation during a church camp, and Janet and her husband John spent Easter Sunday at the prison giving them out.
“Some faces gave nothing away, but others lit up.”