In a marked shift since the 2018 Victorian state election, the drumbeat of traditional law and order politics has faded from the front pages of the major newspapers to the quiet margins of political debate — but not without a price, say legal and human rights experts.
Tania Wolff, president of the Law Institute of Victoria, says one consequence of this “deafening silence” was the corresponding unwillingness of the major parties to recognise, much less discuss, the multitude of crises besetting the state’s prison system.
In the decade to 2019, Victoria’s prison population almost doubled, with the annual outlay in operating costs increasing by a factor of three to over $1.6 billion. And though the number of people in prison declined slightly at the height of the pandemic, the trend has, according to the most recent data, proved short-lived.
“Neither party has wanted to engage in a law and order debate this election because it was problematic for the opposition at the last election,” Wolff told Crikey, referencing the drubbing the opposition received for its fearmongering on African gang violence in 2018.
“But I think this government — which has been really progressive on many social issues — is equally quite happy not to make it a priority and to focus on other issues.”
To this end, Wolff spoke to the waves of punitive changes made to bail, parole and sentencing laws under the Andrews government — most of which were inspired by high-profile controversies or crimes, such as the Bourke Street killings — as well as its recent multibillion-dollar investment in prison expansion, none of which are the usual rallying cries of progressive government.
“[These changes] have all been counterintuitive and they’ve gone against every bit of evidence about what actually works to keep communities safe,” she said.
“We’re now in this situation where 44% of our prison population — a crazy proportion — are there on remand. At the same time, we have this brutal Dickensian situation where many people are spending 23 out of 24 hours in a cell every day — not seeing family [or] support services.
“This is a crisis and it is a crisis that’s been worsening for many years.”
It was a sentiment echoed by Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Nerita Waight, who said the consequences of the government’s eight-year war on crime ran contrary to and undermined its wider investments in Indigenous reconciliation.
“The government has spent billions on its tough-on-crime agenda to buy headlines and silence a noisy minority,” she said. “It’s always been about politics, not what’s best for communities”.
“The Aboriginal imprisonment rate has almost doubled in the last 10 years [and] more and more of our people are dying in prison. And yet fixing a criminal legal system that is killing Aboriginal people hasn’t been discussed by Labor or the Coalition.”
Greens MP and spokesperson for health and justice Tim Read said the bipartisan silence spoke to the success of Labor’s bid to neutralise the opposition as the party of choice for law and order.
“It’s true it didn’t play well for the Libs at the last election, but to avoid controversy in that space Labor has largely adjusted their policy settings to match the Libs,” he said, pointing out that growth in spending on police and prisons had wholly outpaced that of education and health in recent years.
“Rather than investing in the difficult task of meeting social needs and crime prevention and reform, Labor’s been spending billions on expanding the police force and building more prisons to warehouse vulnerable populations, half of [whom] haven’t even been convicted.
“They’re taking the electorate for fools.”
According to the 2022-23 budget papers, construction of the state’s newest prison, the Western Plains Correctional Centre, has cost in the order of $1.2 billion.
The 1248-bed prison, which remains empty, is located in the Barwon South West region near Geelong, and has a physical footprint five times the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The new maximum-security prison has primarily been framed as an investment in jobs and the economy, with community safety cited as a subsidiary consideration.
“[The] Western Plains Correctional Centre will provide ongoing economic benefits to the Geelong region,” read a statement on the Community Safety Building Authority’s website. “We’re creating over 1200 jobs and investing $279 million in Greater Geelong.”
A government media release in 2020 likewise said: “The new prison is delivering more than 1000 jobs, with $279 million in economic benefit to the Geelong region.”
Similar statements have accompanied the build of a new $419 million youth detention centre near Werribee in Melbourne’s west, described as a “state of the art youth justice centre”.
When asked, Read said it was “bizarre the government would boast about using imprisonment” as a form of job creation.
“This is trying to put a positive spin on a very sad social story,” he said.
As recently reported in Crikey, the decision to build the new 140-bed youth detention centre is not without controversy, given there are fewer than 120 young people on average in detention on any one day in Victoria.
On top of these new builds, the government is currently spending a further $791 million to upgrade and expand five existing prisons across the state, as part of the record $1.8 billion set aside in its 2019 budget for prison infrastructure.
In the most recent budget, a further $342 million was pumped into the $4 billion pool of funding Victoria Police now receives annually, which, with more than 22,000 personnel, makes it the highest-funded and largest police force in the country.
That investment has occurred against the backdrop of a steady decline in the incidence of crime over recent years, with the state’s crime rate at its lowest in five years, excluding COVID-related breaches in 2020.
Wolff said the funds set aside for prisons and expansion of the police force would be better spent on crime prevention or other essential services, such as health and education.
“What Victorians don’t understand is that none of this is new money; it’s money that’s not going into local schools, that’s not going into transport, health or other essential services that we need so much as a community,” she said.
“Just as every civilised country around the world is looking to improve their rehabilitative programs, in Victoria, in 2022, we’re building more prisons. And instead of addressing the problems in our criminal justice system, we have this deafening silence.”
A government spokesperson said the annual operating budget for prisons in 2022-23 is $1.83 billion. As of the end of October, there were 6717 prisoners in Victoria, up from 6651 last year, nearly 3000 of whom were unsentenced.
Minister for Corrective Services Sonya Kilkenny was contacted for comment.
The statistics seem to have the makings of a good Venn Diagram.
44% of the prison population are on remand (ie not convicted). I have seen stats which indicate that 40%+ of convicted prisoners are repeat offenders (have been in prison before) and that a similar proportion have a mental health issue of one type or another.
Addressing the repeat offender issue, only, if prisons were run differently, with an emphasis on re-shaping the behaviours of prisoners on release, there would be (i) fewer victims of crime and (ii) fewer people re-entering the prison system, (iii) a reduced demand on the public purse for building prison spaces.
Tackling mental health and changing remand rules, too, would give a triple whammy effect.
Some very wise words of wisdom there Paul. However, trying to tackle those profoundly important issues that you raise, against the background of a free-market capitalist system, is an exercise in futility. Major changes, dare I say it, a revolution, in our thinking about the nature of the society that we wish to live in, is required.
Absolutely. Any politicians capable of working with corporations to run prisons for profit have already committed to mass incarceration under the worst conditions they can get away with, and consequences be damned.
It’s a shame that the level of press scrutiny of this election seems to be focused on the nutbags orbiting around the Liberal Party or upon Andrew’s past covid policies than on actual issues such as the ones just described.
Good article, very clear. Tania Wolff said:
Yes, the parties do not give a monkey’s elbow for keeping the community safe or anything else like that. Their big idea is to keep exploiting fear, and it suits them very well to have policies that do nothing to reduce crime (and so generate fear) while they boast about how very hard and tough and strong they are. Tim Read said:
Why wouldn’t they? Where is there any sign of parties or candidates getting increased support by adopting more rational policies?
All this sounds to me like yet another (albeit small) piece of evidence to suggest that this free-market capitalist ‘utopia’ that we are supposed to be thriving in, is dying the death of 1000 cuts. This decadent system will, one day, destroy itself.
Just as a ‘by-the-by’, I spent last week in Japan and I can say that I felt safer walking around any of the Japanese cities that I visited, including Tokyo, than I do walking around cities in Australia.
The major parties love being seen to be tough on crime and criminals because they think it plays well with the electorate and are afraid of beibg wedged by the other mob for being soft. Hence the ever more punitive action against offenders. Nothing is going to change until the public start sending signals that this is crap. Not going to happen because the public like the pollies to be tough on criminals.