25/03/2025
By Mark Little FIEP, General Manager Strategy & Communications at CVGT Employment
Recently I had the opportunity to participate in a small, yet powerful, employment expo at one of Victoria’s regional prisons. I hadn’t been to this prison for many years, and I found it unrecognisable. The investment made in facilities and services has been enormous.
The facility provides a huge range of areas for skill development and training opportunities, but this was next level compared to what I had seen previously when I was a regular visitor to Victorian prisons for work.
Sadly though, the issues we were dealing with all those years ago are still prevalent today. Large numbers of men preparing for reintegration into mainstream life, bringing with them a range of complexities that we are all well aware of; finding suitable living arrangements, reestablishing familial connections, plus accessing and securing what we might consider simple life necessities like driver licenses, phone numbers, email addresses. Then there is reengaging with health practitioners and other support services we might all take for granted.
I was there to promote another important consideration – gainful and meaningful employment, post release. We providers all set up our small information desks, ready to spruik our service offering to the men in attendance.
All providers of employment services are genuine in our belief that supporting Participants to find work involves developing levels of trust that are authentic, reliable and steadfast. But we all know complexities arise when talking with these men, as they do with all program Participants, that involve more than just being unemployed. The intersectionalities of various barriers to employment can be tough to navigate, regardless of the Participant’s background. And they are often hugely complex for the people we support who haven’t been engaged with the justice system.
However, when we speak with and observe these men in their last few months of incarceration, we witness a range of additional barriers that need attentive and critical listening skills. If we spend time allowing them to tell their stories, we can learn a huge amount.
This includes their lives pre-sentence as much as it does their time in detention. There are stories of additional barriers such as poor education outcomes perhaps, but also resilience and creativity – and I mean the positive creativity they instil when developing workarounds to cover up their potential education deficits. Or their potential developmental or intellectual disability or acquired brain injury that may or may not have been identified early enough to secure the appropriate support. Or their past traumas including domestic violence, abuse or exploitation. The list goes on.
While I listened to one young bloke tell his story, I realised we can do better. And when I say “we”, I mean the system. If there are better services and support mechanisms for some people, can they make better life choices to begin with? I think they can.
This young bloke had done the wrong thing, and to many people it wasn’t a minor indiscretion. I have to believe him when he acknowledges he has done the wrong thing. But I can’t help but wonder if he had appropriate support either at school or at home, when it was realised that he had an intellectual disability, would he be where he is now?
This young bloke wants to get a job. He has done some great stuff inside, learning new things and developing his skills. He has had a job previously, so he can do it. Now though, he has the added complexity of managing the prejudices of a potential employer and the angst that comes with explaining that ‘gap’ in his resume, together with an intellectual disability, let alone other potential barriers like a lack of confidence, having nowhere to really call home when he is released, or no real means of transport in his regional release location.
Combine all this with the exemption he will likely face from Centrelink when he is released, and the odds are against him. Recidivism rates during this exemption period are all too high.
My point is: we need to address the systemic waste we are witnessing. The waste in resources through holding him in prison in the first place, the waste in lost income and subsequent taxes he may have contributed to if support was available sooner, the waste of so much of this young man’s life being unable to contribute to his family and community.
A comparatively small investment in this fella, at an earlier stage in his life, may have saved the massive correctional costs later.
My gut instinct is he will succeed upon release. There was something in this young bloke, call it an elusive spark, that left me with an overwhelming feeling he will do his best and will succeed. My subsequent concern though is that for this one young man, how many others are revolving through the system because services aren’t available when they’re needed?
