Community rehabilitation succeeds in lowering recidivism rate
17 Oct 2022 09:06am
Photo for illustration purposes only - Photo from Sinar archive
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Under the Offenders Compulsory Attendance (Amendment) Act 2022 - passed by the Dewan Rakyat two months ago and enforced on Sept 30 - the CAO is now applicable to detainees serving sentences of up to three years, instead of only one year as was the case previously, to enable them to participate in rehabilitation initiatives outside the prison walls.
Since the implementation of the rehabilitation-in-community programmes, the rate of recidivism (prisoners’ tendency to relapse into crime) has reduced, with only one in 400 prisoners who have completed their sentences becoming repeat offenders.
This shows that rehabilitation initiatives carried out outside the prison walls have proven effective in preventing them from getting caught up in criminal activities again.
Under the Offenders Compulsory Attendance Act, the court can issue the CAO as an alternative to imprisonment to those convicted of certain offences to enable them to serve their sentences by doing compulsory work.
The provisions under the recently amended Act can also be applied to Syariah law offenders in states currently in the midst of amending their respective Syariah enactments.
Prisons Department director (Prisons Policy) Supri Hashim told Bernama the amendments are in line with the department’s target of seeing two-thirds of its eligible prisoners completing their sentences through the rehabilitation-in-community programmes by 2030.
"We expect more offenders to benefit from the CAO following the amendments to the Act concerned as the alternatives to incarceration (such as the rehabilitation-in-community programmes) have helped to reduce the number of repeat offenders.
"Based on Prisons Department statistics, we found a reduction in the percentage of inmates becoming repeat offenders after participating in the CAO programme or any community-based rehabilitation programme,” he said.
Besides the CAO, the Prisons Department has also implemented several other initiatives to lower the repeat offender numbers, among them being the parole system, release of prisoners on licence and inmate reintegration programme involving a total of 6,203 prisoners.
According to Supri, the tendency for ex-prisoners to return to crime is caused by, among others, the economic factor, particularly in the case of those who are not accepted by their community and find it hard to get a job.
"However, if they are able to serve their sentence (by performing compulsory work) in the community, these offenders, who are provided accommodation and jobs will be trained to assimilate into society. This will indirectly prevent them from returning to a life of crime,” he added.
Supri said the department has targeted 10,000 prisoners to be issued the CAO for the whole of this year and has, to date, achieved 79.5 per cent of the target.
The outside-the-prison-wall initiatives are also helping to erase the stigma attached to ex-prisoners and people are now more open to accepting them, said Supri, adding that the initiatives indirectly help to boost the confidence of the offenders and enable them to build a better life for themselves when they are released later.
"We receive many requests from plantation companies, factories and service providers to hire prisoners under our rehabilitation-in-community programmes. They receive the same pay as the other workers.
"This proves that society has confidence in the prisoners’ abilities. In fact, some of them who have done well in their work and proven their abilities have been appointed to higher posts and offered better salaries,” he said.
Supri added that rehabilitation programmes implemented outside the prison walls also help to reduce overcrowding in prisons which can lead to cost savings for the government as the cost of managing the inmates hired under such initiatives is fully borne by their employers.
Malaysian prisons have a capacity of only about 66,000 and according to Prisons Department figures, 76,336 inmates are currently serving their sentences.
"The cost of providing food and basic necessities to each inmate in prison per day is RM14.50,” he said.
Home Affairs Ministry secretary-general Datuk Seri Wan Ahmad Dahlan Abdul Aziz was quoted as saying that the Prisons Department can save prison management costs by RM182 million a year through initiatives such as rehabilitation-in-community programmes.
He said as much as RM5.5 billion had been spent over the past five years on prison management costs for the provision of equipment, facilities, medicine, food, control, escort, staff emoluments and so on.
Meanwhile, legal practitioners have described the amendments to the Offenders Compulsory Attendance Act, which has existed for over five decades as a "positive and progressive” step towards beefing up provisions for alternative punishments for certain criminal cases.
Lawyer Ahmad Shamil Azad Abdul Hamid said extending the CAO to cover imprisonments of up to three years is appropriate to the current situation.
He said he himself had used the CAO provision when he served as a magistrate in Sungai Siput (North), Perak, between 2010 and 2015.
"At that time, the CAO could only be given for certain cases where the jail term was less than three months. This limited the use of the Act concerned as the (CAO) provision was only for very light offences or traffic summons cases where the person summoned couldn’t afford to pay the fine,” he said.
Ahmad Shamil Azad also said that the amended Act, however, limits the types of cases that can benefit from the recent amendments because the original provision does not specify the maximum jail term for cases eligible to be considered for the CAO.
"Under the new provision (in the amended Act), the CAO can only be used in cases where the jail term provided is not more than three years. So, the CAO cannot be applied for cases where the maximum jail term is higher (more than three years).
"For example, under Section 379 of the Penal Code, the maximum jail term for a first-time offender is seven years. But the CAO cannot be used even though the offence committed constitutes a petty theft,” he said. - BERNAMA
