Goulburn Correctional Centre inmates raise money for Anglicare

More precisely, Corrective Services would order Domino's pizza for them and the inmates would add $10 each to the price, which would go to charity.

Over three days and more than 250 pizzas later, the initiative raised $2758 for Anglicare's family support services in Goulburn.

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Senior correctional officer, Frazer Kerr, said the exercise was something of a logistical challenge but everything from meat lovers to vegetarian delight pizzas were delivered hot to the prisoners.

Correctional Centre governor, Paul Coyne, told The Post that such initiatives would become more common as the facility moved to a new operating regime.

The 'centre of excellence' model, already underway in Hunter and Macquarie Correctional Centres, is aimed at self-driven rehabilitation and harnessing inmates' strengths.

"(It's focused on) engaging more with the community and giving inmates a sense of purpose," he said.

"Goulburn (jail) has a reputation as a hard place we want to turn that around and make it a centre of excellence...The guys get a real sense of purpose. When we told them how much they'd raised from the pizza drive, they were very excited."

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Mr Coyne said he'd met with Mayor Peter Walker to gauge how inmates could become involved in more community projects. A group already helped maintain Saint Saviour's cemetery but he believed there were other possibilities and endless benefits.

"When you treat inmates as human beings and give them a sense of value, they come back with a view of the future and of gaining meaningful employment. The limit is only what we imagine," he said.

"The guys have made mistakes in life but they have genuine skills."

Mr Kerr said the prisoners were "very keen" to be involved in more projects and saw it as an opportunity to better themselves.

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Anglicare's regional manager of housing and homelessness, Toni Reay said the donation was very welcome. The funding will help support families in need with food and other cost of living pressures.

"It's an example of community helping community and is especially needed in the lead-up to Christmas," she said.

"We've had a huge increase in the number of people needing emergency relief. Whereas previously it was about 50 per month, now it's closer to one hundred."

In the past financial year there were 600 people left homeless in Goulburn. Anglicare is funded to support 250 cases. Ms Reay said 40 per cent of clients had suffered domestic violence.

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Cost of living, family circumstances and other factors were fuelling the trend.

"People are doing it tough and the homeless crisis is endemic. We are seeing more people receiving no grounds evictions from rental properties," Ms Reay said.

"These funds are absolutely very welcome. We couldn't run our services without donations like these. It keeps us going."

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