Yoga on the Inside and the Queensland Corrective Services – using yoga to help reduce recidivism

Yoga on the Inside delivers trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness programs to people within Australia’s prisons and rehabilitation systems. Queensland Corrective Services (QCS) was their founding client in 2019. Yoga on the Inside now provides health and well-being services to more than 242 prisoners per month nationwide.

Opportunity

With the prison population being one of the most stigmatised and socially disadvantaged groups in Australia (p.7 Queensland Prisoner Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2020–2025), QCS understands the importance of health and wellbeing programs being person-centred with a trauma-informed approach, as well as being adaptable to the correctional setting.

In alignment with the Queensland Prisoner Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2020–2025, in 2019 QCS engaged Yoga on the Inside to deliver an evidence-based health and wellbeing program for prisoners. The success of the program, led to QCS expanding the program to a further four correctional facilities in 2023.

Solution

Yoga on the Inside is a Queensland-based certified social enterprise and the Australian affiliate for the United States-based Prison Yoga Project. The business was founded to assist people who are impacted by the symptoms of trauma, marginalised and under-served to not just survive, but thrive.

The Prison Yoga Project has been operating in the United States for over 20 years and has published extensive evidence that trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness practices in prisons can:

• reduce the physical, mental, and emotional impacts and healthcare costs associated with stress and unresolved trauma
• develop self-awareness, self-worth, empathy, and compassion that lead to positive personal and self-rehabilitation choices
• foster a more peaceful and humane incarceration environment for incarcerated people and staff
• reduce the rate of recidivism among formerly incarcerated people.

QCS recognised the potential of this type of program to reduce costs associated with incarceration, recidivism and unresolved mental health conditions as a result of traumatic experiences. By developing a yoga practice and embodied mindfulness while incarcerated, people can use that practice as a stable anchor to assist them as they re-enter the community.

Outcome

Following their response to a Request for Quote (RfQ) in 2020, Yoga on the Inside delivered a 10-week pilot across five Queensland correctional facilities before expanding to a further nine programs across four facilities in 2023.

Following the pilot, 50 participants were surveyed. Analysis of the results by Griffith University's Criminology Institute found:

• an average of 12 participants per class
• 93% of survey respondents reported physical, mental and psychological benefits including improved sleep, better coping skills, reduced anxiety, increased awareness, improved control of anger and overall stress reduction
• 33% of participants reported feeling calmer at the end of the program
• 1 in 5 participants reported a reduction in physical pain
• more than half of the participants reported that the classes helped with relationships and family issues
• 97% of respondents felt they could continue practicing techniques and skills learned, both in prison and upon release
• the majority of participants requested a continuation of the program.

In 2023, a further 131 incarcerated individuals participated in the nine programs facilitated each week across the four correctional facilities.

In addition to the delivery of the program to QCS, Yoga on the Inside has gone on to provide programs in other state corrective services agencies (for adults) in Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales. Yoga on the Inside also provides yoga and mindfulness programs to young people in youth detention centres in Western Australia and Brisbane, Queensland. The learnings and increased capacity, which began with the QCS pilot, have also allowed Yoga on the Inside to deliver its award-winning program and benefits to other groups including:

• people in recovery from substance abuse
• Defence force veterans
• people affected by Family and Domestic Violence
• people with psycho-social disabilities
• frontline workers
• youth at risk
• people from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

The established relationship between QCS and Yoga on the Inside for the supply of health and wellbeing services meets the strategy’s objectives to 'enable and improve health and wellbeing’ of prisoners and ‘connect through partnerships’, as well as meeting the Queensland Government’s commitment to ‘increase spend with genuine, quality, social enterprises’ (QPS 2023).

Government buyers can learn more about Yoga on the Inside on the Social Traders Portal.
For more support on how your agency can consider social procurement for your next procurement activity please email socialprocurement@epw.qld.gov.au.