A Darwin rehabilitation service helping former prisoners confront their drug and alcohol addictions has been forced to close prematurely to make way for a new women’s prison ahead of the Northern Territory election.
It means 40 beds will no longer be available for parolees working to overcome substance abuse, amid concerns from police over alcohol-fuelled violence and antisocial behaviour across the territory.
Mission Australia Residential Rehabilitation Service’s (MARRTS) contract with NT Health was due to expire in June 2025, with plans to eventually return the facility back to the NT’s Department of Corrections.
The rehab service sits within the Stringybark Centre in Berrimah alongside a sobering up shelter and detox unit — the only coordinated addiction support service of its kind in the NT.
Mission Australia’s NT regional leader Paul Royce said the organisation was initially led to believe it would have about 12 months to transition from the site, allowing enough time to help arrange a new model of care with NT Health in a different location.
Instead, the NT government has ordered MARRTS to close its doors as soon as July 19, leaving the residential rehab service no choice but to shut down entirely.
“The disappointing thing for Mission Australia and others is that First Nations people are already over-represented in our prison systems,” Dr Royce said.
“To lose 40 beds for an AOD [alcohol and other drugs] preventative service and have that money being re-afforded to prisons, it sort of doesn’t make sense.”
Since 2017, MARRTS has offered a 12-week residential rehab program for people recovering from addiction, taking most of its referrals from Corrections NT for former prisoners jailed over alcohol and drugs-related offences.
“Locking up people again and again doesn’t work,” Dr Royce said.
Former prisoners share benefits of rehab program
Rhiannon Ponto, a Ngalakam-Alawa woman from the remote community of Minyerri, is nearing the end of the program.
The young mother recently served jail time over a fatal drink-driving incident.
“That’s why I don’t want to drink anymore,” she said.
“It breaks your heart. When you go back to prison you worry about family and sorry business.”
Ms Ponto said she found rehab at MARRTS challenging at first, but felt she was now making progress.
“Alcohol is the problem,” she said.
“I can go back to prison, but I came here because they help me and support me here.”
Alcohol abuse ‘exacerbating’ domestic violence, says NT Police
NT Police Commander Daniel Bacon said “the most insidious” form of alcohol abuse in the territory was “its role as a catalyst, and in exacerbating, domestic and family violence”.
“More often than not, when police respond to a report of a domestic and family violence related assault, alcohol is involved,” he said.
The NT has long grappled with staggering rates of domestic and family violence, particularly in remote communities facing extreme disadvantage and poverty.
About 65 per cent of men in territory prisons have been charged with domestic and family violence-related offences, according to recent data from the NT’s Department of Attorney-General and Justice.
Such offences include breaching a domestic violence order, homicide and related offences, sexual assaults and acts intended to cause serious injury.
Jason, a traditional owner from a remote NT community, was one of them.
The ABC has chosen not to use his real name to protect the identity of his former partner.
Jason was jailed in 2020 over a horrendous alcohol-fuelled attack that left the mother of his children with life-threatening injuries.
“I brutally attacked my ex-partner, to be honest,” he said.
“I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Jason said MARRTS’s 12-week program had helped him reflect on his use of violence while intoxicated.
“This place is good to learn more about relationships, connections and to recognise anger and how to deal with the alcohol situation,” he said.
The initial period following an offender’s release from prison is typically a dangerous time in the NT, where reoffending rates are among the highest in Australia.
Jason said he had witnessed this revolving door of hardened reoffenders firsthand.
“They’re like: ‘I don’t care about prison, I can go back again’,” he said.
“It’s better for rehab like this to stay and calm down, do programs because in prison there’s not much.”
NT government spends big on prison expansion
To alleviate pressure on the territory’s overflowing prisons, the NT government has allocated $57 million in this year’s budget to convert the Stringybark Centre — which houses MARRTS, the Darwin Sobering Up Shelter and an NT Health-operated detox facility — into a new women’s prison.
The funding will also be spent on turning Don Dale Youth Detention Centre into an adult men’s prison with expanded training and rehab programs.
A further $34 million will be poured into upgrades to Alice Springs correctional services, which include plans to convert the town’s Paperbark alcohol rehabilitation facility into a new women’s prison.
An NT Health spokesperson said Mission Australia’s Darwin sobering up shelter would continue to operate in a new location, while the centre’s detox services would move to Palmerston Regional and Royal Darwin hospitals “with no gaps in service delivery”.
In a statement, a spokesperson from the NT’s Department of Attorney-General and Justice said the new women’s prison would “focus on the specific needs of women in relation to educational and therapeutic programs”.
“This will include vocational training and industry, as well as psychosocial programs and culturally appropriate, clinical treatment,” the spokesperson said.
The impending closure of MARRTS will leave four residential rehab clinics remaining in Darwin.
The ABC understands at least one of these services has been forced to stop taking new referrals due to overwhelming demand and under-resourcing.
Dr Royce said he was concerned the NT government’s plan to expand the prison system at the expense of rehabilitation services was a step in the wrong direction.
“If we build the prisons, they will be full as soon as they’re probably built,” he said.
“While we’re doing that, we’re not actually putting any attention onto why people are going into prison in the first place.”
In a statement, an NT Health spokesperson said funding was being provided to remaining rehab providers to increase their bed numbers, and said a tender would soon be put out for a new rehab service “to ensure no loss to service capacity”.
The spokesperson said NT Health was developing a new model of care for people grappling with addiction, which would include inpatient treatment for those facing acute withdrawals and a new community outreach program.
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