Almost everyone in prison today will return to our communities. Whether they reoffend depends on what we do to prevent recidivism. In Western Australia, we know what works – prisoner employment programs – so the question is will we allow it to happen instead of relying on counterproductive risk management and control strategies?
Western Australia has around 9,000 people in custody, with close to 3,800 due for release within the coming year. Most will come home. What happens next will shape not only their lives, and that of their families, but the safety, well-being and cohesion of the communities they return to.
We already know one of the most effective ways to reduce re-offending: employment prior to release. The evidence is not contested. Recidivism sits at around 40 per cent. When a person leaves prison with a job, it drops to about 20 per cent. That is not a marginal improvement. It is one of the clearest findings in corrections policy.
Employment provides structure, income and purpose. It restores connection to family and community. It reduces pressure on crisis services and lowers long-term costs. Put simply, it works.
Yet right now, in Western Australia, we are making that pathway harder to access. The Prisoner Employment Program (PEP) is designed to connect people leaving custody with real jobs in the community. In regional areas, it has been built over time through trust between prison staff, employers and participants. It is practical, locally grounded and effective.
But PEP is increasingly unable to function. Part of the problem lies in recent legislative changes. The Family Violence Legislation Reform Act 2024 has expanded electronic monitoring and introduced stricter conditions for people in custody and on release. In effect, people have been re-positioned from participants in reintegration to subjects of risk management. This reflects a broader policy drift towards increased surveillance during and after prison, one that sits uneasily with what we know supports a person’s return to community and reduces re-offending.
These settings narrow the pool of eligible participants in the employment program and add layers of complexity to already constrained processes. They make transition harder, not easier.
Even where employment is secured, it is often accompanied by intensive monitoring and restrictive conditions. These settings can sit at odds with the stability and responsibility that employment is meant to foster.
Despite these barriers, front-line prison staff are identifying suitable candidates for PEP. Employers are willing to offer jobs. The demand exists on both sides. What is failing is the chain of decisions that should connect people to opportunity, responsibility and community participation.
Approvals required to progress applications, such as access to court histories and clearance of workplace supervisors, sit within centralised processes. Yet these processes have slowed to a crawl. Weeks become months. In some cases, decisions are not made at all.
This is a structural failure at precisely the point when timing matters most. PEP operates in a narrow window before release. If approvals do not arrive in time, the opportunity is lost. Employers do not wait. When placements cannot be confirmed, they move on. Positions are filled elsewhere. Trust erodes. Relationships built over years can be lost in months. Pathways back into community life quietly close.
For people in custody, the message is blunt. They apply, they wait and they hear nothing. Motivation declines. Engagement drops away. The idea of a future beyond custody becomes harder to sustain, weakening hope, identity and inclusion.
For staff, the position is equally untenable. They are expected to deliver rehabilitation outcomes but are constrained by processes outside their control. Their work shifts from enabling change to managing delay. Credibility with employers is lost.
All of this sits in direct tension with what we know, what we say and what we fund. The WA Department of Justice’s own data demonstrates the impact of employment on reducing re-offending. Government policy speaks of community safety and rehabilitation. Yet the operational reality is moving in the opposite direction. We are investing heavily in monitoring and control, while allowing one of the most effective pathways out of re-offending to stall.
Employment is not just an outcome. It is part of a process of repair directed to rebuilding roles, restoring responsibility and re-establishing a person’s place within the community. This is not about choosing between accountability and rehabilitation. It is about recognising that one without the other is ineffective.
Approaches grounded in connection, responsibility and repair consistently produce better outcomes than those built on control alone. When employment pathways are blocked, the consequences do not disappear. They re-emerge as re-offending, fractured relationships, increased pressure on police and courts, and growing prison numbers. In that sense, the current approach is not just ineffective. It is counterproductive.
This is not inevitable. It reflects a set of priorities that place control ahead of connection, and process ahead of outcome. The solutions are not complex. They require timely decisions, clear accountability for approvals, and a willingness to treat employment as a core part of rehabilitation and reintegration. They require legislative settings and administrative practice to work together in ways that actively support reintegration and relational repair.
Above all, they require us to take our own evidence seriously. If we know that employment reduces re-offending, then access to employment should not depend on whether paperwork can move through a central office in time. It should be embedded as a priority across corrections and re-entry practice.
If we are serious about community safety, we need to stop blocking what works, and stop being surprised when failure follows.
Jane Anderson is a social anthropologist and Adjunct Research Fellow, University of Western Australia. She works with marginal Noongar peoples of the South West to implement preventative and interventionist strategies needed for reducing individuals and families who are vulnerable to engagement in the criminal justice system.