Victims' stories trigger remorse

Tony Bashford

A scheme bringing together prisoners and victims of crime seems to be more successful at changing prisoners' attitudes in a fortnight than many traditional prison programmes manage in years.

The Sycamore Tree scheme, run by the Christian-based Prison Fellowship, asks six prisoners and six crime victims to share their experiences for eight two-hour sessions inside prisons.
The name comes from the biblical story of the tax collector Zacchaeus, who climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus walk nearby. Jesus saw him and asked to visit his house. Zacchaeus confessed that he had overcharged people and gave back to his victims four times what he had taken from them.
A retired insurance agent who took part in the programme at Waikeria Prison during the past fortnight, Tony Bashford, said several prisoners confessed their guilt - like Zacchaeus - for the first time.

At an early session, one man was "quite proud" of what he had done. While being taken to court from police cells, he had lashed out at his escort officer and escaped.

"They see the police as the enemy, so they don't see using violence against the police as wrong. They see them as oppressors.

"He didn't give any consideration to the fact that he could have done this policeman physical harm," Mr Bashford said. "We changed his understanding by pointing out that that policeman was doing his job, that the policeman had a family, that because he was injured he was deprived of income, therefore he was a victim. He was off work for a week."

At the next session, after a weekend, the prisoner was remorseful. "He said he would like to put things right between himself and the policeman," Mr Bashford said. "We went through the exercise of writing a letter to the policeman, not to be sent, just as an exercise, but to see how he would write it."

Although the six victims in the group were not the actual victims of the six prisoners, the prisoners were moved by hearing the victims' stories.

One man told them how he had lost an eye when a burglar broke in. He talked about the trauma he felt. Then he told them how he later met the burglar, put his arms around him and forgave him.

"That had quite a profound effect. They went quiet," Mr Bashford said.

Conversely, the victims gained an insight into the prisoners' often horrific backgrounds. Prison Fellowship says 80 to 90 per cent of New Zealand prisoners were physically or sexually abused as children.

""If someone does something to you, it offends your dignity." Mr Bashford said. "These boys had no sense of that.

"They didn't know the difference between right and wrong because they had no sense of dignity or shame because of the way they were brought up."

An evaluation of the programme at Hawkes Bay and Rimutaka prisons found that it increased prisoners' acceptance that their crimes had harmed others and reduced their support for crime as a way of life.

No studies of reoffending rates have been done yet, but studies of 20 other rehabilitative programmes run by the Corrections Department found that in 13 cases reoffending rates were actually higher for those who did the programmes than for those who did not.

The department pays about half the costs of the Sycamore Tree programme.