Overcrowded, warehouses for Indigenous Australians, and ineffective in tackling the causes of crime. That’s what leaps off the pages dealing with corrections in the Productivity Commission’s annual Report on Government Services released today.
Take the revelation that, courtesy of its obsession with jailing people, the Liberal government of Colin Barnett is running its prisons at 120 percent of capacity. In laypersons language this means chronic overcrowding.
This is a dubious honour shared with the Labor government of Paul Henderson in the Northern Territory which reports a similar figure. South Australia, whose Treasurer Kevin Foley proudly boasts about prison overcrowding, did not submit any figures this year. You can guess they’d be up there with WA and the NT though.
It is one of a number of bleak statistics from the PC’s report, in which only one state and one territory, Victoria and the ACT, shine. And surprise, surprise because they have low imprisonment rates, both have very low recidivism rates.
Despite the fact that just about every skerrick of empirical data available in this country, and other jurisdictions such as the US, Canada and the UK shows that jailing people is generally inefficient and therefore a waste of taxpayers’ money compared to non-custodial alternatives, our politicians just aren’t taking any notice.
In 2008-09 on average there were 27,612 people in prison – up 4.4 percent on last year’s number. That’s a rate of 165.6 persons in every 100,000 is in jail in Australia – up from 162.6 in 2007/08.
And are getting bang for our buck? No. Recurrent expenditure on prisons in 2008-09 was $2.8 billion. By contrast community corrections only cost us $400 million. And not only are community corrections much cheaper, they work. 71 percent of community corrections orders were completed by participants in 2008-09 – that’s a high number given the fragility of many participants, coupled with the ready opportunity to fail to show up at the community corrections centre, or for a counselors appointment.
Yet because of the law and order policies of governments which make going to jail mandatory for some offences in WA, NSW and the NT the use of community corrections is in decline.
The number of prisoners in education and training programs is less than 40 percent around Australia, and in NSW and Queensland the figure is under 30 percent. It’s not simply a case of prisoners not availing themselves of the opportunities.
Governments are not spending enough on expanding opportunities for prisoners – this is borne out by the fact that the amount of money spent on programs per prisoner has only risen $6 in the past six years. Given CPI increases that means the actual dollars spent have dropped.
But the most damning aspect of our corrections system is the fact that 25 percent of the prison population is Indigenous. In all the huffing and puffing by the Howard and Rudd governments over the need for federal intervention in Indigenous affairs, there has been little said about this appalling incarceration rate. Why?
Presumably because that would mean politicians softening the law and order rhetoric and giving courts the message that jailing Indigenous Australians must not only be a last resort, but perhaps not a resort at all. Imagine the tabloid reaction to that.
Greg Barns is a Director of the Australian Lawyers Alliance and involved as a lawyer in cases concerning human rights for prisoners.
One of the reasons why government avoids the subject of indigenous membership of the prison community is the fear of being tarred with the racist brush. If one is to seriously examine this proposition one has to understand why this segment of the community is disproportionately representedin jail. The answer is quite simple. Proportionally they broke the law more often.
However to address the root causes of this means you have to discriminate at the basic level to try to address the causal relationshipbetween behaviour and incarceration.
Accusations of racism arise when ever any intervention strategy is raised when the target group is differentiated on the basis of its racial origin. Of course this is not racism in the sense of negative discrimination, it is an attempt to rectify a social problemby behavioural change to avoid the problem occurring.
For reasons which are difficult to understand any such intervention is resisted by the group that is the target of the proposed assistance. This relates to education, distribution of social service payments and access to alcohol to nominate three areas where attempts have been made and the intervention has been relatively unsuccessful. “Tough love” advocates like Noel Pearson understand this situation but he receives very little support from within the indigenous community as a whole.
Chest beating by single issue advocates does nothing to help the problem, and if anything it promotes the concept of victimhood when in reality the victims of incarceration are functionally masters of their own destiny. Don’t break the law and you won’t go to jail.
I would suggest that the energy of these advocates be directed not to criticising government for responding to breaches of the law but to go back to the communities where these breaches occur and come forward with some strategies to address the causal relationship rather than the response. Of course this would be too difficult for these do-gooders who prefer to stand on the sidelines and criticise.
It is too simple to say that Indigenous (and poor) Australians are over represented in jail because they broke the law more often. There are at least 3 confounding factors. First, the police and other authorities monitor the behaviour of Indigenous Australians and other people who do not conform to authorities’ view of normal or appropriate behavour and thus police catch these people up in the criminal justice system more and earlier than other people. Secondly, non conformist behaviour of poor people is more likely to be criminalised and the penalties are higher than non conformist behaviour of wealthier people; no-one goes to jail for being drunk and disorderly in the Melbourne Club. Thirdly, once caught up in the criminal justice system the middle class are much better represented and are able to show a permanent home address, steady job and ties to the (middle class) community which keeps them out of jail more than poorer people.
Even taking into account these factors, I expect that poor people commit more burglaries than rich people, just as more poor people were transported to Australia for stealing bread than rich people. But why would more poor people commit burgs? Yes, some are improvident and use expensive drugs, but few of the improvident and using middle class commit burglaries. I suggest that there is a complex interplay of social and economic factors in landing in jail, and personal agency is only one of them.
We have overcrowding in jails because, like America, we believe in a system that seeks retribution rather than rehabilitation. With 156 prisoners per 100.000 we are high compared with OECD countries, especially the Scadinavian countries. Norway has 56 per 100.000.
Our jails are also housing a disproportionate number of people that need mental health instead of incarceration.
As for incarceration of so many indigenous people. Many also fall in the category of needing mental health care and rehabilitation for alcohol related issues. Again it is much easier to be jailed than to be given care and support before it is too late.
Australia is privately rich but publicly poor. We must think of paying more taxation!
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Thank you Greg for raising a topic that has been winding me up for years. As someone with middle class pretensions (pay less tax, protect what I’ve got etc) I cannot understand how successive governments, across Australia continue to waste taxpayers’ money on something that has been repeatedly shown not to work.
I don’t want people locked up without access to any form of meaningful rehabilition or education services (let alone drug & alcohol rehab), since they will only re-offend and I don’t want to be the next victim of crime.
I don’t want people locked up when prevention, community correction and other programs are many tens of thousands of dollars per year per head cheaper since I’d like my taxes to be used wisely. And that money could be better spent on ‘goods’ such as health, housing, education etc.
I don’t want people locked up for a set period of time under mandatory detention/ mandatory sentencing laws when that might be a counter-productive outcome in the circumstances, but magistrates no longer have any discretion.
I don’t want …. (am I boring anyone yet?)
Most importantly, I don’t want more people to end up in prison solely because some politican gets into a bidding war on the floor of a parliament or is trying to appease uninformed talkback howling.