With a goal of helping people leaving prison find secure employment and reducing reoffending in our state, this project exemplifies our values of respect and responsiveness.
Background
Corrections Victoria’s Inside to Outside Jobs strategy was created to help people leaving prison secure quality and sustainable employment.
The job strategy combines vocational education and work training opportunities in a range of prison industries and job programs.
Challenge
People who have left prison have high rates of reoffending. Research conducted by the University of New South Wales shows that 60 to 70% are unemployed at the time of reoffending.
Corrections Victoria sought to improve the rehabilitation and reintegration of people leaving prison, by creating a program that would help people secure meaningful employment opportunities after their release.
The Inside Outside Jobs strategy seeks to educate and train people in prison in skill sets that are in demand across industries and help them to secure meaningful employment opportunities after their release.
An important part of the strategy is holding job fairs in prison to connect people at the later stage of their sentences with employer partners, employment service agencies and community organisations.
This helps people in prison build relationships and connections to post-release services and job vacancies.
Establishing the program required collaboration between government, education and recruitment providers, and employers across a range of industries.
Result
The Inside to Outside Job strategy is credited with significantly contributing to lower reoffending rates.
Since early 2023, over 440 people leaving prison have been assisted to gain employment, with only 9.5% of those assisted with employment returning to the correctional system.
For people returning to the community, the program has provided them with employment and the benefits associated with meaningful work, making them less likely to reoffend.
For the Victorian community, this means improved community safety, and greater economic participation.
Corrections Victoria won the international Correctional Excellence Award for Reducing Reoffending for this program at the 2024 International Corrections and Prisons Association conference.