A six month ‘alternative to custody’ program for First Nations women in Alice Springs appears to be turning lives around. It provides intensive support and tailored rehabilitation services instead of prison time for offences. Since 2020, 80% of women who complete the program do not go on to re-offend. That is stark contrast to general risk of re-offending rates in the Northern Territory, which are the highest in the country.
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00:00Surrounded by high wire fences, but this is not incarceration.
00:08This is their home, not our workplace.
00:11So they're human beings first and foremost, they're not a number.
00:14Here it's different because there are support workers but it's nothing like prison, you
00:19know, you get more of an opportunity to be yourself, free.
00:24Sharon was locked in a jail cell in central Australia just a few weeks ago, and it wasn't
00:29her first time.
00:31At just 23, she's already been in and out of the system.
00:35Violence is what led me here, a drug habit as well.
00:38I was on meth and a user for quite a while, and I've been down a rehabilitation centre
00:46before, the path of it, but I got out and I done the same things.
00:51The NT has the highest rates of recidivism in the country, with almost 60% of people
00:57released from prison returning shortly afterwards.
01:01But for the past four years, women in Alice Springs have had an alternative to custody,
01:06a six-month program that's proving locking people up might not be the best way to cut
01:12crime.
01:13If locking up people worked, we would be the safest place in the world, and we're not.
01:18Whereas 80% of the women who came through the alternative to custody during the evaluation
01:23period, 80% of those did not re-offend.
01:26The program is an optional alternative to serving a prison sentence, and a path Sharon
01:31chose so she could be with her son.
01:33I think it works because we look at a person's individual needs, the whole person, their
01:39housing, their employment, their trauma, their history, their family, their future, what
01:44goals they actually want to achieve.
01:46It's life skills for, you know, the outside.
01:49When you get out of these gates, it's what you want to make of yourself.
01:53Like other women who've graduated from the program with training and jobs, Sharon is
01:57considering becoming a support worker to help other women who've been through similar hardships.
02:03Despite the positive results here, the government plans to build two new women's prisons.