Reentry support in Victoria, Australia: managing risk, or fostering agency?

Abstract

More than half of Australia’s prison population have experienced prior incarceration. Factors such as homelessness, mental illness, and poverty compound the challenges of reentry. Reentry support in Victoria, Australia is state funded, yet delivered via three non-governmental organizations. In this article we explore practitioners’ experiences of working with people who were incarcerated in the liminal phase of reentry—where one is neither prisoner nor citizen but in-between. Practitioners reported trust and rapport are the central pillars of practice and choose to utilize strengths-based approaches instead of risk-based approaches, but felt that service brokerage is impeded by associated professionals’ concerns around risk.

Keywords:

• reentry
• desistance
• stigma
• strengths-based practice
• risk-need-responsivity

Acknowledgments

We want to acknowledge the contributions of the interviewees, to both this research and the community. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for taking the time and effort to review the manuscript, and whose feedback undoubtedly strengthened this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).