Home is where the prison is

By TIM WATKIN

Former TV3 newsreader Darren McDonald shouldn't be getting Sky installed any time soon. Nor should he be making plans to get through all those books he's never got round to reading, should he be granted home detention by the Parole Board in the next few weeks.

"My experience is that we need to keep detainees busy," says Parani Wiki, service manager of the Auckland home detention team. "Almost all people on home detention, are either in programmes or they're in employment. We don't want them sitting around and we won't let them sit around."

McDonald walked out of court last Friday on bail and smiling. Justice Marion Frater had sentenced him to eight months in prison for offering to supply Ecstasy and conspiring to supply methamphetamine, but then gave him leave to apply for home detention.

The smile may have faded during the week as opportunistic MPs leapt to their feet in the house to condemn the judge's ruling and letter after letter was published in newspapers debating the pros and cons of his sentence.

On Monday came news that Bailey Kurariki, the youngest New Zealander to be sentenced to manslaughter following his part in the killing of pizza delivery worker Michael Choy, had applied for home detention. More political storm, more letters to the editor.

The public debate generated more heat than light. It showed how little home detention, running three years next month, is understood. United Future MP Marc Alexander complained that McDonald's sentence, for a conviction carrying a maximum 14-year jail term, sent the wrong message to the community.

In fact, ignore his B-list celebrity and McDonald is the perfect candidate for what probation officers call "home d". He's a first-time offender, at 36 he's older than most drug offenders, and, as even the prosecution said, his offending was "absolutely at the bottom end of the scale".

The point of home detention is to keep minor offenders away from the poison of prison, speed their rehabilitation and re-integration into society, and save the taxpayer money.

When it was launched in October 1999, then-Minister of Corrections Clem Simich praised the savings the scheme offered, adding "the key advantage of home detention is that it will divert offenders from prison and the negative effects that environment can have. Offenders who have jobs will be able to keep working and parents will also be able to maintain their family responsibilities."

The $6.5 million five-year monitoring contract was awarded to Chubb New Zealand and the first four prisoners were placed on home detention on October 19. In its first three years, the way it has been used has changed considerably.

Judges were slow to embrace the scheme at first, especially in the North Island, but its use has increased from 700-800 people annually in the first two years to 1200 offenders last year. Between January and August this year, 1120 offenders have begun home detention.

As of this week, 556 people were serving time at home. That's 9.7 per cent of all sentenced inmates, up from 2.9 per cent in the 2001 census.

The average length of time spent on home detention has fallen from 19 weeks in the 1999/2000 year to 13 weeks in the 2002/2003 year.

Together, those figures suggest either judges or the parole board are tending to use the scheme more often, but for more minor offenders.

The type of offenders on home detention has changed, too. Largely property offenders at first, detainees are now more representative of those before the courts; mostly guilty of drug offences or theft.

Compared to the prison population, there are greater percentages of women and non-Maori on home detention.

Whether home detention amounts to getting off lightly remains contentious. Criminologists take differing views. Canterbury University's Greg Newbold says, "There's no doubt it's the easy option. If it wasn't, everyone wouldn't be going for it. It might be a pain in the neck, but it's nothing like being in prison".

Anita Gibbs, a lecturer at Otago University who has done the most detailed research of home detention in this country, found however that home detention has some harsh consequences. According to her 2001 study involving 21 offenders, they struggled with boredom, added relationship stress because of their confinement, and financial pressures (families receive no government money to care for the detainees).

Those they lived with also struggled. "In many ways sponsors were serving the sentence alongside the detainees," Gibbs says.

Despite the pressures, she found that - unsurprisingly - most offenders preferred it to prison. Gibbs found it worked best for mothers and pregnant women and concluded, overall, that it helped families rebuild.

But, she adds significantly, not everyone who gets home detention would have wound up in prison. She's concerned judges are bumping up some offenders who would previously have got community-based sentences, adding to the number of inmates in this country rather than reducing them.

"What's happening here is much like in other Western countries where home detention is more often used as an alternative to an alternative [sentence] rather than reducing imprisonment."

Her research also offers a statistic that might steal the smile from McDonald's face. Only 31 per cent of those recommended for home detention in its first 18 months got it.

"Those chosen are usually safe bets," she says. [The Parole Board] choose the more reliable people."

Corrections Department figures for 2000/01 show just how safe. While 32 per cent of offenders who had served time in minimum security prisons were reconvicted and 18 per cent re-imprisoned, just 18 per cent of those on home detention were reconvicted and 7 per cent re-imprisoned.

How does home detention work?

It's crucial to note that there are two types of home detention, often not distinguished in media reports.

Front-end home detention deals with offenders such as McDonald who have been sentenced to prison terms of two years or less. The judge decides if they can apply to the parole board for their sentence to be served at home.

Back-end home detention refers to prisoners serving more than two years in prison, such as Kurariki. They can apply to the parole board to be placed on home detention for the last three months of their imprisonment, before their parole begins. Those sentenced to life or preventative detention aren't eligible.

Any application goes first to the probation service, who prepare a report for the parole board hearing. The parole officer interviews the offender and everyone 18 years and over with whom they would be living. If anyone says no, the application will fail.

"Some people withdraw their application once the set-up has been explained to them," says Wiki, "usually because they're concerned about the impact their presence will have on family."

The report covers the suitability of the nominated home, information on rehabilitation programmes and the chance of re-offending. It doesn't make recommendations, but is "very, very clear" about the risks of each case.

A detainee's prison walls are typically the boundary of their property.

If home detention is granted, Chubb has 48 hours to turn the house into a prison. They install a "black box", which reads information from an anklet that acts as the modern equivalent of the old ball and chain. The anklet is twice the size of a watch and reads the wearer's body temperature, location and whether it's been tampered with.

The information is relayed to Chubb via the mobile network. Weak cell-phone coverage south of Greymouth, north of Kaitaia, in the Coromandel and parts of central Otago mean home detention isn't an option there.

If offenders go beyond their prescribed boundaries or remove the anklet, the black box alerts Chubb, which in turns contacts the probation service. While there have been instances of technical failure, Wiki says the system usually works well and Gibbs' research concurred. Chubb and probation officers also make random checks on the detainee.

Anyone can visit a detainee, although the parole board can impose non-association orders as part of the detention.

Despite the punishment's name, almost all detainees will be allowed outside their home. If they still have a job after their crime, they can continue to work. If they're not working, they will do training or rehabilitation courses, most commonly dealing with violence prevention and substance abuse.

Detention is managed in a series of four phases, each offering extra privileges and increased "approved absences" from the home - "if they have been violation-free", says Wiki.

In phase one, lasting at least a month, the detainee has three face-to-face meetings with their probation officer. Approved absences are limited largely to work, training, rehab and funerals or tangi with an escort. Phase two changes little, except that absences can include more education and church attendance.

In phase three, face-to-face meetings drop to two a week, the detainee can go to one family function a month and he or she can play sport for up to four hours a week. Near the end of the sentence, in phase four, probation officers visit once a week, more visits to family are allowed and funerals can be attended unaccompanied.

Any breach, and detainees can find themselves back at phase one, even in prison.

The hope, says Wiki, is that detainees will be reconnected to their families and friends, making reoffending less likely. But it's no holiday at home. "We rule their time," Wiki says with a laugh that might give anyone expecting a soft option little comfort.

Numbers on home detention:

As of this week 556 offenders are on home detention, 115 of whom are women.


1200 offenders went on home detention in 2002


1120 went on home detention between January and August 31, 2003.


Of the 556 serving, 279 are European, 205 Maori, 51 Pacific Island, 15 Asian and 6 other.


The average length of home detention orders over the past 3.5 years has been between 16 and 19 weeks.


Categories of offences for those serving home detention:

Drugs: 149

Violence: 93

Serious traffic offences: 87

Sex: 28

Dishonesty: 18

Property abuse: 11

Property damage: 8

Foreign offences: 7