This week, the Dominion Post ran an article under the rather optimistic headline, ‘Fulltime work lined up to keep prisoners happy’. It quoted Prime Minister John Key talking about a “working prisons” proposal designed to get prisoners working full-time in the prison system.

Corrections Minister Anne Tolley said in a statement that every prisoner would eventually be engaged in some work five days a week. This plan hopes to lower the risk of reoffending by 25% within the next five years.

The idea is good, as fortunately the medieval practice of locking prisoners in a cell and throwing away the key is no longer in vogue. Today one of the goals of the corrections system is to reintegrate prisoners to society. For this, job skills obviously help.

But job skills alone will unlikely be enough – there is a larger problem. Of the 22,000 people ending up in prison each year, 90% (19,800) have committed crimes under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Yet only 1,000 prisoners attend drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes each year, because very few are eligible.

When a person enters the prison system they undergo a test strangely called the Risk of re-Conviction X Risk of re-Imprisonment model (Roc*Roi). The model measures factors such as gender, age, seriousness of offense, and total jail time. The Roc*Roi then sorts prisoners into different classifications – only some of the prisoners undergo drug and rehabilitation and other remedial programmes.

One example is the ‘Release to Work’ programme, only available to prisoners with a certain low risk classification. Although re-offending has dropped by 16% among the prisoners who attend the programme, the percentage of the prisoners who are involved is less than 1%. The effect on overall re-offending rates is therefore very small.

There are many methods of reducing re-offending – and, yes, giving prisoners employment skills is one of them. However, Corrections’ annual report suggests that currently drug and alcohol programmes are more effective than employment programmes.

So instead of just compelling prisoners to take work programmes, wouldn't it be more effective if the government helped prisoners combat the underlying issue of drugs and alcohol as well? Who knows, it might save a few taxpayer dollars as well.