Advancing Corrections Journal - Edition #20 - Scholarly Reflections on Core Considerations for Correctional Practice| Article 7 (ACJ20-A007)

In the 35 years since the RNR principles were first published the RNR model remains the foremost framework for reducing recidivism for people in prison. Yet many prison environments have changed little in that time, remaining places of and for punishment, based on outdated and unaffordable ideas about how best to respond to offending. Efforts to improve safety of prison environments for staff and residents, and to enhance community outcomes through rehabilitation are significantly compromised by misalignment with the core philosophy and operating model for prisons. The RNR model has been criticized for failing to substantially reduce the number of people returning to prison. But arguably its implementation has been shaped around an environment intent on harming people rather than helping them. In this paper I suggest that the RNR model could never be the panacea that “reformed” both prisoners and prisons. Yet politicians and correctional executives often use claims of providing “RNR-based rehabilitation” as a defense against more fundamental change, while critics blame the RNR model itself for its modest impact. Creating safe, fair and decent prisons is a foundational activity of immediate importance to the safety and wellbeing of staff and prisoners alike, but the RNR’s model—of reducing reoffending risk by providing human service to those who can most benefit from learning ways to weaken criminogenic needs and live a prosocial life—cannot be that foundation but needs to rest on it. The fundamental prison reform society needs cannot be achieved from inside the system alone. But the development of units, wings or prison regimes with a consistently positive social climate remains an important activity in the interim, along with providing RNR-based interventions in such environments rather than in hostile contexts, so that participants can ingrain new habits of thinking, feeling and behaving, rather than keeping them in a “deep freeze” until they are released.

 

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