Lucie Johnson shared her story of trying to break away from the Tasmanian justice system in the Sunday Examiner last week.
While she freely conceded she had not been doing all she could to help herself, which took great courage, the system around her could hardly have been considered as being as strong as it could be.
Just days after Lucie's confessions the state government announced plans for a Northern prison would be put to a community consultation period to determine if it should be located at the soon-to-be former Ashley Youth Detention Centre site, or if they should persist with long-embattled plans to construct a new facility just out of Westbury.
As part of that announcement, Attorney-General Elise Archer detailed how the new facility would have a focus on rehabilitative resources.
Speaking after the announcement, Ms Archer said as Attorney-General she had demonstrated an "absolute commitment to increasing the rehabilitation and reintegration programs" available in Tasmania.
"My focus has been on being able to offer more of those [alcohol and drug] intervention programs both in and outside of prison," she said.
Yet Ms Archer admitted the rate of convicted criminals who end up reoffending was a challenge.
She could hardly have argued otherwise as she detailed how extensive therapeutic programs at a new Northern facility would be, and how upgrades to Risdon Prison could effectively be redeployed for rehabilitation programs if the added capacity was not needed.
"I wouldn't call [rehabilitation programs and the rate of repeat offending] a failure, I'd say that the focus has to be on rehabilitation,"she said.
"That's the way we'll get our recidivism rate down, that is the way we will reduce the pressures on our prison system."
Despite her stated focus, the recidivism rate - that is the amount of convicted criminals who end up reoffending - in Tasmania is among the highest in Australia.
The most recent available Productivity Commission report showed 57 per cent of Tasmanians were back in jail within two years. Nationally, that rate was 46 per cent according to a commission report from October.
In the immediate wake of Lucie sharing her story, comments about her offending were squared at her and her inability to stop taking drugs. But what hope did she have?
The day she was released from prison she had "friends" offering her free drugs, but nobody offering her shelter from what had landed her in prison in the first place.
Lucie's story laid the struggles for people in her position bare, but it also exposed the struggles the government has faced and will continue to face to remove people from cycles of offending often continuing for their whole life.
Now, John Flanagan shared with the Sunday Examiner the grief he held that the man who killed his wife by vehicular manslaughter, David Holmyard, had been released from prison after four years and had gone back to offending before his two year parole period had ended.
Mr Flanagan foreshadowed injustice in his wife's case in 2016, and five-and-a-half-years later his fears were imagined when her killer was busted trafficking meth.
His certainty the offender would end up back in prison speaks volumes to the opinion Tasmanians have of the justice system, particularly those who have been forced to be so close to it.
But for a genetic disposition to offending, which sociopathy argues for, no objective argument could make a case that Holmyard had been rehabilitated in his four years behind bars.
Combined with anecdotal reports prisoners are unable to access rehabilitation programs during their term of incarceration due to long waiting lists, it is clear pressure will continue to build on a need to find a solution for repeat offending in Tasmania.
While a Northern prison with a focus on rehabilitation should be a step towards reducing the recidivism rate, until that happens it is our friends, neighbours and fellow human on both sides of the law that will continue to suffer.
If you want to share your story of a battle with the justice system, please email b.duggan@examiner.com.au.
- Brinley Duggan is a journalist at The Examiner.
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