New Zealand: Rethinking contributes to Circles of Support and Accountability
Jul 14, 2011
from the newsletter of Rethinking Crime and Punishment:
Developed by a Mennonite community in Canada in the 1990's, COSA are groups of volunteers from the community into which the offender is released. They meet with a sex offender regularly, provide support for their reintegration and at the same time, hold them accountable for their actions. The volunteers receive extensive training and are fully informed of the offender's history, patterns of offending and the thoughts and behaviours that are likely to signal regression. The Circles begin working with the offender before they are released and are headed by a Circle Coordinator who is connected to other relevant agencies and professionals (e.g. probations, the police and clinicians) calling upon their support and advice as required.
Evaluations of COSA projects overseas have shown significant reductions in recidivism and for those reoffending, a reduction in the severity of offences. Evaluations of the pilot project in Ontario showed Circle participants had a 70% reduction in sexual reoffending compared to matched non-participants. Using a matched sample of sex offenders in Canada, Wilson (2007) found that only 2% of circle participants had reoffended sexually, compared to over 12% of non-participants. They were also almost four times less likely to reoffend violently and 3.5 times less likely to reoffend generally.
The New Zealand programme is well supported by experts. Rethinking has been able to contribute to the further development of the programme with funding from another philanthropic trust that will enable the volunteer couple to work on the project on a fulltime basis. That will in turn enable the Robson Hanan Trust to evaluate the programme from a community perspective.
Viable solutions to community violence and offending are often found within the community. COSA are an excellent example of community engagement that increases both offender accountability and community safety.
