Taieri MP Ingrid Leary has been inquiring about changes to programmes by the department at the prison near Milton, which included an increasing focus on high security and remand populations.
"The new focus on remand means that about a third of prisoners in Milton won’t be eligible for alcohol and drug programmes, and to have classification rather than need as the criterion for eligibility shows that cost-savings are paramount", she said.
"As well as excluding a whole swathe of eligible prisoners, the new focus on brief interventions rather than in-depth courses is broad brush and smacks of cost-cutting."
Ms Leary was conscious of the fact the department had to work with the directions it received from government, but worried this meant more were missing out on more intensive treatment.
Addiction services manager Sandie Finnigan said under the previous service configuration, 96 people per year were able to access the old programme.
However, with the new services, 172 people at OCF will have access to alcohol and other drug (AOD) services.
"The prison population at the site has changed, with an increase in the high security and remand populations and a reduction in the low-medium security population.
"To respond to this, we have stopped running the low-medium security residential AOD programme that was operating at the site, as this was for low-medium security prisoners only and there was no longer demand for the programme. It has been replaced with a day programme for high security prisoners, to meet the needs of the prison population at the site."
Ms Leary said this amounted to a "thinning down" of services.
"While the cost per participant is being withheld while a new contractor is sought, I have no doubt that when the financial numbers come out, they will eventually show a significant decrease in both investment and rehabilitation outcomes — if those are even measured properly.
But Ms Finnigan said people were now assessed and then placed on a programme which best matched their assessed level of need from a suite of services which included day programmes to meet low-moderate needs (100-160 hours of treatment); residential programmes to meet moderate-high needs (180-220+ hours of treatment) and brief interventions for the remand population.
"The moderate--intensity day programme at OCF uses an approach that addresses the relationship between offending and substance use. There is also provision for aftercare/continuing care for up to six months following programme graduation.
"The brief intervention for the remand population described above is also now being delivered at OCF. Previously, there was no AOD intervention for remand prisoners available at the site.
"The proportion of people on remand has grown significantly in recent years, both nationwide and at OCF, so delivering interventions for this population is a priority for Corrections."
Ms Leary said if the government were serious about addressing alcohol and substance abuse and associated criminal recidivism, it would be providing appropriate funding to expand these long courses, and make them available based on need, rather than "focusing on the brief interventions as a way to fiddle the targets".
She was worried this approach of brief intervention would become a tick-box exercise without following up with more intensive programmes that look at behaviour change.
"The brief intervention modules provide addiction information. However it is well established scientifically that information alone is almost always insufficient to change behaviour."
