Overwhelmingly, prisons are represented by people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
We see that prison is actually not so much about crime but it's more about lack of opportunities.
My name is Len Nielson, I’m a Project Officer doing prison outreach at Curtin University.
The motivation for our program is about providing
opportunities for people and being an inclusive place.
There are some limitations for people who want to study,
the first being that you've got no access to the Internet.
There are some challenges but it's certainly possible for
students to be able to engage in courses from prison.
Curtin has actually been involved with prisons for quite a number of years,
and programs like JETA, which is the Justice and Equity Through Art,
that’s been running for nearly twenty years.
The JETA program offers art degrees to people who are incarcerated,
starting with an associate degree.
Not only is there a goal of engaging with education, I guess it's also about offering
people an opportunity to do something different with their lives.
This program has evolved so much over the years.
We've started to create a real community around the sort of student cohort.
Myself and other staff members in our area, in the JETA course, go and do one-on-one or
group visits at each of the facilities where we have JETA students.
The challenges are huge for people, so whenever we get a bit of progress or when students
pass the degree, it's pretty exciting for us.
Quite a few times, students have said, ‘This course has really changed my life,
I didn't think I'd be able to do this kind of thing,’ meaning education or a higher degree.
But it does seem that people do find that it changes their trajectory.
So, my pathway to study has been pretty difficult.
I was incarcerated for 13 months.
So I was like ‘I have to do something, you know,
so there’s something for me when I get out.’
And yeah, I got the opportunity to apply for the JETA program.
There was an Education Department and they helped me get some of the stuff done.
But it's pretty difficult because there wasn't a whole lot of inspiration to draw on.
When I got out, there was a really difficult period where I couldn't afford supplies,
and I was talking to the JETA tutors and they came in the next day and brought in a whole
bunch of supplies for me to use, so yeah, I felt really supported.
One of the things we do is about increasing the opportunities for people within prison
to be able to even consider education.
We actually run enabling programs in a couple of prisons like the UniReady program.
UniReady is a program that offers a second opportunity for students who haven't done
their ATAR or formal education up to equivalent of Year Twelve.
The opportunity to reskill themselves, up-skill themselves, and actually connect with us at
the university by taking part in their undergraduate programs.
We do have staff, teachers, educators that actually go in and work with the students.
We believe at UniReady that everyone should have a stronger social justice commitment.
We are not able to get to teach our students every day as you would in a formal environment,
so we need to intersperse or punctuate their learning with peer facilitators or tutors
to help those students along the way.
I'm a UniPASS facilitator for the Boronia Pre-Release Centre for Women
I felt motivated to work in Boronia because, you know, I was stepping out of my
comfort zone to go and work with these students that
may have not had the opportunity to begin with.
We have a chat about the topics and get them familiar with the content, and just practising
using the skills that they need to know.
The feedback that I've received is knowing that they are excited for me to come in each
week and knowing that they're doing really well.
One of the things we try to do is to get student volunteers,
and so, the volunteer programs we run -
we do a resume program at Boronia Pre-Release Prison across the road.
We've also been running a program in conjunction with an organisation called Dismantle,
working with kids who come into contact with the criminal justice system.
Dismantle is a program which takes old and used and often donated bikes to at-risk groups.
This round, we had a group of about eight boys, and they would go in and take apart
these bikes, spray paint them and put them back together.
If they're working and doing something with their hands, they are more likely to
speak about things that are troubling them.
So, I was a representative for Curtin AHEAD, so my role really was to talk to the kids
about how they are going, and create relationships.
It was so beautiful to see the change of them coming in, as very -
they've got this bravado of being tough and, you know, not wanting to talk,
and then at the end they’re acting like fifteen-year-old kids.
You know, they're laughing, they're joking around,
and just seeing those walls break down was really beautiful.
Really what volunteers provide is someone who's motivated and enthusiastic,
and has an interest in helping someone else who might be disadvantaged.
And that I think the volunteers get lots out of it.
The Resume Squad is a fairly new Curtin Volunteers Program,
where a bunch of volunteers head across the road to Boronia Pre-Release Centre,
and we help the ladies to write resumes right before
they head out into the world so that they have a leg up
and are able to more easily enter the workforce after release.
The volunteers usually work one-on-one with the ladies to really build that strong connection
with them, so that they open up.
Activities that we undertake are usually just getting to know the ladies,
you want to know all about their background, everything they’ve done –
everything from babysitting kids to being mothers at a playgroup.
It’s all relevant to a resume, but the ladies sometimes don’t realise that.
So, it’s a lot about building rapport to then make a really stellar resume
that they can take out with them.
Some of the ladies have never written a resume before, so it is really valuable and a tangible
thing that they can take away from each session.
I do actually go into prisons from time to time, and
I meet with some of our students and sometimes the positive outcomes can be
the anecdotes that you get from the prisoners themselves.
The outcome of them being able to look at a university course
and realise that they can actually do it,
that's a really good outcome as far as I'm concerned,
and if it gives them a better chance for a job when they finish well, that's really fantastic.