Vocational education and training provision and recidivism in Queensland correctional institutions
This project investigates the nature of vocational education and training (VET) programs being delivered in correctional centres, including the factors assisting or hindering the delivery of these programs to prisoners. The research also statistically determines the factors most associated with reducing the rates of return to prison of offenders. A brief review of past research was undertaken and interviews with those involved in the corrections system were conducted. As well, various databases were examined to investigate the factors most associated with offender recidivism. The first part of this report provides a review of Australian and other research into the nature of offenders, and in particular, the links between reduced rates of offender recidivism and access to education, training and employment programs at the prerelease and post-release stages. This is followed by a discussion of the findings from 145 interviews with correctional staff, prisoners and trainers in several Queensland correctional centres. Interviews examined staff and prisoner perceptions of the factors facilitating or acting as barriers to the provision of VET programs in correctional institutions. The final section of this report uses quantitative methods to examine the characteristics of offenders who become involved in VET while in prison, and their recidivism rates. The research found highly motivated offenders engaging in and completing multiple VET programs which were not only providing them with technical skills, but which also improved confidence, self-esteem, and broader sets of generic skills. They were very positive about the role that prison staff and trainers were playing in assisting them to develop skills to help them to re-integrate back into the community upon release. The availability and access to dedicated training workshops in correctional centres as well as to outside trainers (and in some cases, tutors) who were highly professional and respectful of prisoner needs, and their often disadvantaged backgrounds, were further supports for the continued emergence of a throughcare approach to prisoner management. Significant evidence emerged from the analyses explaining the importance of pursuing a more integrated program which develops employment skills is that offenders involved in VET were less likely to return to the corrective system. On average, being involved in VET before initial release was associated with a decrease in the chance of returning.
Do Libraries in Queensland Prisons Align with Australian Library and Information Association Minimum Standard Guidelines for Library Services for Prisoners?
The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) produced guidelines for library services in prisons in 2015. Written by a working group of academics, law librarians and prison librarians, the Guidelines were based on the International Federation of Library Association’s (IFLA) guidelines for prison libraries (Australian Library & Information Association (ALIA), 2015; Lehmann & Locke, 2005). Guidelines such as these offer the opportunity for improvement to library services for prisoners if they are implemented, but they need to be followed to be effective (Bowe, 2011)...
European Consumer Access to Justice Revisited
Part I. Setting the Stage: Access to Justice 2.0: 1. At the very outset 2. Access to justice 2.0: breaking it into pieces Part II. Procedural Law: The Traditional Pillar of Access to Justice 2.0: 3. A brief outline of the developments at the pan-EU level 4. Prime examples 5. Compensatory collective redress: the next step? 6. Where to go from here? Part III. Substantive Law: Complementing Access to Justice 2.0: 7. Widening the scope of the value-oriented justice discussion 8. Substantive consumer law-making in the course of time 9. Recent trends and developments 10. The common European sales law 11. Summarising comments on the defragmentation of substantive consumer laws in the context of the CRD and the CESL Part IV. Consumer Access to Justice 2.0: A Multidimensional Framework: 12. From the current state of consumer law to consumer access to justice 2.0 13. The justice debate and consumer legislation 14. (Responses to) counter-arguments to third-party intervention 15. Consumer empowerment 16. Lessons to be drawn.