Bermuda?s record for rehabilitating criminal offenders is a ?colossal joke?, Bermuda Prison Fellowship chairman Jack Harris declared yesterday.

Addressing the weekly meeting of Hamilton Rotarians at the Mariners Club yesterday, Mr. Harris, who has decades of experience working with inmates and has acted as a prisons consultant for many jurisdictions in the Caribbean, argued a recidivism figure of 65 percent is ample proof the system ?is not working?.

It currently costs the taxpayer $62,000 a year for each offender incarcerated ? an overall total of $25 million per annum ? Mr. Harris said, while insisting the local community was not getting value for money.

Obstacles to progress include a ?negligible? support structure assisting offenders once they have left prison and an inmate culture which places the responsibility for rehabilitation on the system and not the individual. Mr. Harris said the Island had ?lost the plot? when it comes to alternatives to incarceration and it was high time more ?effective? programmes were put in place to ?motivate? inmates into becoming law-abiding citizens.

?At the moment we have two very different cultures ? a community culture and a prison culture,? he said.

?In prison you manipulate, you lie and you cheat to get whatever you can and this is reflected in the behaviour of many offenders when they are released. Only by getting inmates to acknowledge their own responsibility for personal reform and through changes in public policy are we going to make any meaningful progress on rehabilitation.?

The Bermuda Prison Fellowship conducts counselling sessions in the prison system five days a week, where Mr. Harris said they attempt to ?challenge? the value systems of offenders who more often than not suffer from a lack of self-esteem and negative self-perception. Mr. Harris also revealed a number of initiatives which the organisation wants to establish, including a designated resettlement office, support groups for the families of offenders in conjunction with the Salvation Army and a programme of personality screening for each individual inmate called Foundation for Success.

The resettlement office would be an independent body separate from the prison system which would assist released offenders find jobs, advise potential employers and help clients negotiate what Mr. Harris called a labyrinth of Government bureaucracy.

Mr. Harris bemoaned his organisation?s chronic lack of funding, stressing that good ideas will come to nothing unless they are given the financial support to function and prosper.

?We at the Bermuda Prison Fellowship have great ideas but no funds. We cannot take the initiatives any further unless some sort of regular funding is forthcoming. But I believe we are in a position to make a difference.?