The revolution in the methods of rehabilitation of released female inmates in Israel
Presented by Avraham Hoffmann at the opening of the International seminar on the “Rehabilitation of Female Offenders: Mothers with Their Children”, Prisoner rehabilitation Authority, Jerusalem, May 2000.
When I was appointed by the Government of Israel to find a solution for the prisoners in Israel, and the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority was founded, it was very painful to recognise that the Israeli social work system did not recognise the problem of prisoners’ children, the problem of prisoners’ wives, the problem of prisoners as fathers, and the problem of the female offenders.
From the beginning I thought about these problems and I want to tell you about my way of thinking and doing. The Hostel for Mothers With Their Children is a logical continuation of the policy I developed since January 1988 concerning women released inmates.
Three principles have directed me and the authority employers in our work.
- The rehabilitation policy for women must be different from the policy used for men.
- According to the Jewish halachah (religious laws), when the father doesn’t have enough money to help all his children, the alimony must be given to the daughters, and the sons must go and seek money for themselves. Hence, we had multiplied the budget for the small population of the female offenders.
- In Judaism there is no stigma. Every person has the right to a new beginning. The descendants of Rahav the prostitute were prophets. The mother’s vocation was in no way an obstruction to their spiritual mission. Hulda the woman prophet was a descendant of Rahav’s family.
The methods: There were no existing examples when the Authority was created in 1984. Thus, we started with small-scale programs. Learning from our mistakes, we improved and corrected them as work was done, and the programs could go a step further. We looked and still look for employees that are highly professional, that have a sense of mission, that are highly intelligent, and who have creative thinking. This is the only way the program works together with the Director General’s orchestration, although there are many difficulties.
I would like to give you examples of how we go step by step, and of the way we deal with a lacuna as we encounter one, searching for a new solution. When we first came up with the idea we have to found a hostel for the female offenders, we thought we should open one for those without children, because we didn’t know how to deal and manage such a hostel.
When we opened the Hostel we saw that one of the main problems are employment. We discovered that the common way of helping male inmates in the employment field doesn’t work with the female offender. We saw a lacuna and found a solution. We took a social worker whose specific work was employment problems and placing female offenders at work. We conducted an evaluation research whose results pointed out that it is not enough to help place a released female inmate and help her keep her work position. We found out these women must receive a former training, because most of them have never worked. The conclusion was to create the Employment Day Center we visited.
Another problem, as I told you before, was caused by the social work services disregarding the problems of the female ex-prisoner. Once Michal, Director of the Employment Day Center, told me she had referred one of the women to the social welfare bureau. The woman was told she could come back a month later. For a drugs addict and prostitute, waiting a month means that all the work the best social worker has invested goes down.
There are few female ex-prisoners, so one can say, “Why not?” But we must find a solution for every problem and every population.
Although we call it a daily centre for employment support, it is not just for that. It is an attempt to coordinate between employment and social treatment. It can work only if they go together. We see it also with our program for men – without following them in their work, nothing works.
Thus, what Martinson wrote is not untrue words. They are not true if you change the situation, and when you don’t change the situation nothing works, of course. We constantly keep in mind the need to find solutions. This centre has offered a solution.
We saw that many of the female offenders that have children do not join our programs. Not because of us. They do not join the programs of the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority nor any other programs. We concluded that there are two possibilities: either we say these women who have children do not have an opportunity to rehabilitate, or we change our way of thinking. These women do not want to be separated from their children any longer after their imprisonment. Therefore, we must find a new and real answer for their dilemma.
Eventually we come up with the idea of the Hostel for mother that we visited. After three or four years we observe a new problem, which I think is a real problem. When we deal with a man in a hostel, the stay in the hostel is for one year. Many people tell me it is a too long period. But for the female offender, mothers with children, there is a real need for a longer period. Every institution has its problematic features bad things. No hostel can solve all the problems. As you try to solve as many problems as possible, new problems arise.
Thus, perhaps we found a solution to an additional problem we encountered while running the Hostel for mother with children. In June or July we plan on opening a system of satellite independent apartments close to the hostel, to which the women will be able to move after completing the Hostel’s program. Later we might shorten the stay in the Hostel, while these women and children will stay connected to the Hostel. In the first time the hostel will become also their family home. So they be given there the opportunity to work on the mother-child dyad that Dr. Abigail Golomb talked about. We try to lessen the institutional aspect as much as possible (that every institute of course has to have).
This is the way that we work and perhaps if we speak in a few years, I can find other lacunas and other things we must change. The main idea is that you cannot operate social programs without an open mind to change. If you think that you will begin a program and so it has to go on the same way for one hundred years, you don’t understand the dynamic way of life that we live today.
What I say today might well have to change in five years. Because when I founded the first hostel for males, I placed it in a village, in a lonely village, and thought this was the best thing for the ex-prisoners. But after a short time, I saw it was not such a wise thinking. In a little place, a moshav (rural settlement) everyone knows each other and if one does a mistake, the whole hostel becomes a problem. So I moved the hostel into towns.
Although I am orthodox in religion, I am convinced one must be unorthodox in every other thing. We must constantly assess our programs, whether they needs to be improved or even altered, whether they stands in daily life, if not, we must be brave to admit it and try to improve it in the future. It does not take one’s honour or wisdom. In every program we must constantly invest all our power, but simultaneously be able to overlook our deeds as spectators.
To conclude, I believe what we do with the female offenders can be a great thing, not only for female offenders, but also for deprived women that are not imprisoned. There are in our society hundreds, maybe thousands – I don’t know how many women who were not in prison – for which it is perhaps dangerous that they were not in prison. Because they were not in prison, the social worker, a good social worker says, “you are not competent to educate your child,” and they take them to an institute or to a family hostel and so on and so forth.
After five years the child came back to his home. He came to his mother and he says, “With this primitive mother, I will live together? No.” and he ran away. So we make a very good thing that we help the child, but at the same time we do nothing with the mother. Here we see that without combining and cooperation between what we do with the mother and the child, we do half work, and perhaps if you do in such things of life and death, things of half work, you do nothing, or you do perhaps bad things. You are convinced you make very good things, but perhaps you make bad things in a long way of thinking.
So, what I believe, and this was the aim of Dr. Casale and me when we sat in a coffee house in London, to bring all the people that have an understanding, and knowledge, academics and practitioners to sit together and think together. I think that now, not everyone will receive my ideas. You can discuss any of them, but if anyone who goes back home thinks about what he does, writes or teaches, giving another way of thinking to it, I think this short week we spend together will do the work.