Every year, almost 20,000 people leave prison in New South Wales, but less than three per cent of them get a bed in a supported accommodation program. The residents of Rainbow Lodge are among the lucky few – but one slip-up could land them back inside.He'd completed a two-year stretch for a string of break-and-enters.
Last August, after leaving Wellington jail, near Dubbo, he too was accommodated at the same hotel where Doyle had been put up 14 years earlier."When I first walked in there," he says, "the first thing people ask, do you want to buy anything?"The hotel is one of dozens contracted by the government to provide emergency accommodation.
Caseworkers provide assistance with the footings of life: obtaining 100 points of identification, reopening bank accounts, registering for Centrelink.But Rainbow Lodge's mission is far broader. Robinson had suffered a tragedy while inside prison — his parents had both died. But for the first time in a long time, he was hopeful."I remember that last six months in Goulburn," he says, "vividly thinking that this was the moment that I'd waited for my whole life, that I was going to have an opportunity to change things"."The reality was, unfortunately, that within six weeks of getting out, I'd shot up all that money, in the Astoria Hotel in Kings Cross.
He explained to the man behind the counter that he needed the government to front him his next welfare payment, because he was on the run from parole, and otherwise he'd be forced to mug somebody.When the man laughed, Robinson jumped the counter and robbed him. Within two-and-a-half years, Robinson got clean, left prison and gained formal qualifications as a community services worker.
"Then, as a society, we have criminalised their trauma response, which is drugs and alcohol, and put the emphasis back onto them," Robinson says.Between 25 and 60 per cent of prisoners are likely to have had contact with child protection services or been hospitalised for mental illness, a 2019 Queensland study found."Sometimes, the obvious conventional responses, Claude understands immediately that they are counterproductive.
The reason for Pitt's vigilance — even at Rainbow Lodge he adhered to his two-hour-a-day jailhouse workout routine — was made out by an explosion of violence at Silverwater prison, just six days before he got out.Its owner, hearing talk of who had swiped it, feared he would appear vulnerable should he not retaliate."He was screaming, blood was everywhere. It was horrific."
Parole Prison Jail Rainbow Lodge Recidivism Reoffending Breaking Free Life After Prison
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