Finding work after prison: barriers and opportunities for former detainees in the ACT

Over half of the people in Australian prisons have been incarcerated before, which means that interventions to help people stay out of prisons are crucial. If people find employment after they are released, they are less likely to return to prison. Here Dr Caroline Doyle, Dr Sophie Yates, Professor Lorana Bartels, Associate Professor Anthony Hopkins and Dr Helen Taylor discuss their research into the employment experiences of people released from prison in the ACT.

Image: The Alexander Maconochie Centre from an aircraft landing at Canberra Airport, Nick D, CC BY-SA 4.0

Australia’s prison population is almost as high as it’s ever been, and more than half of all people in prison here have been incarcerated before, some of them many times. There is a large evidence base to suggest that employment is very helpful for helping people avoid returning to prison, but there are many barriers to employment for people after their release from prison. We talked to people who had been in prison in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and asked them about their experiences with employment and what services might help them find and keep jobs.

The link between employment and recidivism

Decades of research has underscored that, while prison significantly disrupts people’s working lives, being employed is one of the things most likely to prevent recidivism (i.e. committing further crimes and getting further criminal penalties). If people can find stable employment suitable to their needs and skills, they are more likely to be reintegrated (or even integrated for the first time) into society, and much less likely to go back to prison. But, upon release, people face a range of challenges in their efforts to find work, such as discrimination, due to their criminal record; low education levels; lack of housing and/or transport; addiction and/or mental health issues; and rehabilitation or parole commitments. The very high levels of recidivism and reincarceration rates across Australia, coupled with high unemployment rates for people who have been prison, show that the current policy and program settings do not help people reintegrate and find jobs when they are released.  

The ACT context

There is only one prison in the ACT, the Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC). It was designed as a ‘human rights prison’ – the only one in Australia – and has a range of opportunities for people serving time to work and complete employment-related programs (although there are problems with program implementation and service gaps for some detainees). Recidivism rates in the ACT are even higher than in the rest of the country, with 77.7% of detainees in the AMC having been incarcerated previously. Detainees in the AMC have relatively low levels of education, compared to the population of the ACT as a whole, which is a problem because the ACT and federal public service (the ACT’s two biggest employers) often require a certain level of education for prospective employees.

What we did

In 2019, we recruited former detainees by leaving flyers in the offices of agencies providing services to former detainees. We interviewed 11 people (nine men and two women) who had been sentenced or on remand inside the AMC and released in the last six months. Most had been in prison before, some of them several times – highlighting the cyclical nature of incarceration in many detainees’ lives. We asked them about their experiences with services inside prison and after release, how things had been going for them since release (e.g. with housing and employment), their strengths as a potential employee, and what a ‘perfect’ release would have looked like for them. The full report is here.

We use pseudonyms here to protect participants’ anonymity.

Our findings

What our participants told us demonstrates the interconnected nature of the challenges that people experience after being released from prison. While some were working and one owned his own business, most were not in employment. Gaining and keeping a job was intimately intertwined with other facets of their lives, such as physical and mental health, addiction recovery, housing, education, and transport. John reflected:

Probably one of the biggest things coming out of jail would be employment. If guys got accommodation and job, where they’re getting a decent wage… They’ve got no reason to go back to their old lifestyle.

Criminal record checking

One of the biggest barriers participants talked about was the requirement for criminal record checks for many jobs, or worrying about what to say if they were asked about whether they had a criminal history:

Renee: A lot of [potential employers] do police checks… honesty is the best policy. So, you’ve got to be honest and say ‘yes, I do have a criminal history’, where you get knocked back a lot for.

Brian: An employer turns around and says to me, ‘so what have you been doing with your life over the last 12 months?’ And you say ‘jail’… There’s your anxiety flaring up.

Brian also felt that if he got a job now and had a certain level of income, he might go down the pub or to his dealer’s place and end up ‘getting back down the same path’ that landed him in prison. This reveals the important links between substance abuse recovery and employment.

Vivian told a poignant story about filling in an online application for a job, thinking ‘I wish I could lie’ about her criminal record. She changed her mind several times about whether to tick the criminal record box: ‘I went no, yes, yes, no, yes, no. Because it is, it’s personally challenging’. She felt that, in an interview, she would have no problem talking about her history and experiences, but worried that, if she were honest in the application, she might not even get to the interview stage.

Individual-level barriers

The issue of anxiety and self-confidence also came up as a barrier for participants, when thinking about finding employment. James talked about ‘a fear of failing’ and Brian said that ‘having to approach someone and apply for a job, [there’s a] big anxiety factor there for a lot of us’. Carl mentioned not being ‘qualified at anything, and I’m not much of a studier either’. Michael was insecure about not having any top teeth. Some participants talked about people being incarcerated for so long they became ‘institutionalised’ and could find it difficult to live and work in the outside world, especially if they were released without much support.

Practical barriers

Transport and housing were also big barriers for some participants. Stable and safe housing was a challenge for most and Kevin pointed out the obvious connection: ‘It’s pretty hard to sort of hold down a job with no stable accommodation’. The average wait for standard public housing in the ACT is currently more than 3½ years.

Several participants had no car – a very common post-release issue – and were therefore limited in the kinds of jobs they could travel to. Carl had needed to leave home at 5am to cycle to a job induction for 7am start, but many people in a similar position would not be able to do this. Lack of public transport is also a perennial issue in Canberra.

Programs aren’t always useful or relevant

Several people spoke about the disconnection between jobs and programs they had access to in the AMC and what would be useful on the outside. It can be difficult to run educational programs in prison, because of timetable disruptions, due to lock-ins, or difficulties with different cohorts not being allowed to mix. As Michael said: ‘you might have to go three times a week. But pretty much every week, you’ll miss a day, you know what I mean?’

Several felt the jobs worked and skills gained inside the AMC weren’t applicable to the outside world. For example, Brian said: ‘I don’t think it meets the level that would be required in the community’, while Kevin observed that ‘It’s not like they would do [these jobs] on the outside…it’s only to get a bit of money’. John had gained several tickets (licenses) for things like forklift operation while incarcerated in another state, but felt that, at his stage of life, ‘I’m getting a bit too old to be bouncing around machinery’. Likewise, Carl felt ‘I can’t see… my life being defined by I’ll go and dig a hole’.

What’s needed to help prisoners gain and keep employment

Participants had some suggestions for what might help them. Carl spoke about the importance of connecting people with potential employers, before they are released:

having an agency for prisoners, only prisoners, and trying to get employers to take them on, certain people… While they’re still in there and when they come out, when they go to the job, they know they’ve been in jail and they’re going to give them a go. That’s what I think what’s needed.

There are some organisations in Australia that only employ people who have been in prison, but many companies are reluctant to do this. Carl said: ‘I think people should be shown… [the] skills to go into the workforce, what to say or to do’, when approaching employers or filling in applications. For James, counselling would have helped:

Probably more programs. You know, therapeutical stuff. I don’t know, maybe having some counsellors that help with building people’s confidence and stuff like that and not thinking they can’t break that mould and they’re destined to fail, you know what I mean?

And John wanted people to get qualifications for any work they did inside:

If we’re going to do a job out there, at least get trained in it properly. If you’re going to do cleaning, you’re training them so they can walk into a cleaning job [out] here. Or if they’re going to be in the kitchen, they get qualified for the time they’re working… Or just a kitchen hand. Go wash dishes, or like go work in a sandwich bar or go do a short-order cook course or things like that…

The AMC has made some moves in this direction: it opened a bakery in 2017 and people working there have the opportunity to complete a Certificate II in Retail Bakery Assistant. One of our participants had done this and found it useful. 

We think the thing that could make the biggest difference in a way that’s achievable to implement is to have a focused, individually-tailored employment service for detainees (both sentenced and on remand), that begins the day they are incarcerated, links to other services, such as housing and health, and remains consistent both during and after incarceration. This kind of tailored service would be able to determine and meet detainees’ individual needs and connect them to meaningful employment before they leave prison, while ensuring that this employment situation fits with the circumstances, challenges and restrictions of their individual lives. This type of service is not a new suggestion, but it’s still far from being adopted or implemented in the ACT or consistently in most Australian prisons.

Source: Doyle, C., Yates, S., Bartels, L., Hopkins, A., & Taylor, H. (2021). ‘If I don’t get a job in six months’ time, I can see myself being back in there’: Post-prison employment experiences of people in Canberra. Australian Journal of Social Issues. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.197

Moderators: Lisa Wheildon and Sophie Yates