PPI Seminar Series
Friday 30 Sept 1-2pm
OGGB Case Room 2 (260-057)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://auckland.zoom.us/j/91753300727
- Dr Alice Mills (Social Sciences)
- AP Barry Milne (COMPASS)
Every year around 7,500 people are released from New Zealand prisons, less than half of whom are able to settle into long-term accommodation on release. Housing is well known to be the ‘lynchpin that holds the reintegration process together’ (Bradley et al. 2001) and existing international research has suggested that stable housing is associated with reduced recidivism post-release. ‘Going Straight Home?’ is a mixed methods study which examines the role of stable housing in reintegration and reduced reoffending amongst those released from prison in Aotearoa New Zealand. This seminar will draw upon longitudinal quantitative data analysis from interviews with 200 people prior to release from prison and 6-months post-release, and narrative interviews with 16 people 18-months post-release. It examines whether having stable housing reduces recidivism amongst people who have left prison in Aotearoa New Zealand, and argues that whilst housing remains the lynchpin for reintegration, post-release housing needs to provide a sense of ontological security in order to play a role in desistance from crime.
Bios
Alice Mills is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Auckland. She has extensive experience of research in criminal justice, including post-prison reintegration, mental health in prisons, the role of community and voluntary organisations in criminal justice and specialist courts. She is co-editor of Mental Health in Prisons: Critical Perspectives in Treatment and Confinement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and is currently leading a study examining the links between stable housing and recidivism amongst those released from prison, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.
Barry Milne is an Associate Professor in the School of Sciences and Director of the Centre of Method and Policy Application in the Social sciences (COMPASS) at the University of Auckland. He is a quantitative social scientist with an interest in drivers of health and wellbeing across the life-course. He has extensive experience undertaking survey research and also in the use of administrative data to answer social policy questions. Barry and Dr Mills co-supervised a statistics student, Anika Terry, who analysed the data from this research.
