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Time for prison reform across Australian states -
ABC - The World Today - 26 Feb 2007
EMILY BOURKE: The dramatic siege in Melbourne's north-west
this week may have given some in law enforcement and the criminal justice system
pause for thought.
In a country with relatively low crime rate,
paradoxically Australia has a high
incarceration rate.
The projections are that prison populations are set to rise and accelerate
primarily because of harsher sentencing.
So is there a disconnect between crime and punishment in Australia's states?
To discuss this I spoke to -
* criminal justice expert Professor Eileen Baldry, from
University of New South Wales,
* Hugh de Kretser from
Smart Justice Australia; and
* former prisoner Robert Barco who's now youth program coordinator.
Robert, if I can begin with you. Some former prisoners say prison is simply
a
warehouse or a dumping ground for criminals where there is no stimulation or
learning opportunities. What are your thoughts on the reform and rehabilitation
programs that exist?
ROBERT BARCO: You know, I would probably have to disagree with that statement
that it's a dumping ground. There are opportunities, you know, whether someone
is ready to uptake on those opportunities is a different story. It is my belief
that the opportunities that are available can be expanded a lot further such as
the Violent Offender Therapeutic program you know, that looks at life patterns,
understanding of offending, non-committal thinking, things like victim empathy,
offence cycles and realise prevention. That is a therapeutic program that goes
for about 12 to 14 months as opposed to lower intensity programs that only go
you know, for 60 to 80 hours. So by the time that's finished the following week
you've forgotten everything you've learnt so and it goes over and over and
perhaps the opportunities that are available need to be linked to programs that
will actually make you employment-ready as well.
A big problem that I found with a lot of people in the community that have been
in prison when they are released they don't really have a job to go to and
starting as a job-seeker from scratch with no resume because you have been in
jail for the last 10 years, no actual qualifications to get you in anywhere and
having the barrier of a criminal record makes it harder as well but if you have
some qualifications and you are work-ready you've got a much bigger chance to
get into employment.
EMILY BOURKE: Eileen Baldry, what do you see as a fuelling force in recidivism?
Is education a cure-all?
EILEEN BALDRY: Yeah, could I just add to that, to what Robert said, he is
absolutely right that there are some very good programs in prison that do assist
people if they are ready to take them up but I might just add to it that across
Australia, by far the majority of people who are going to prison are in prison
for less than a year and a significant number of people are in for less than six
months and at the moment something like 25 per cent of our prison population
across Australia is on remand.
Now being on remand means that you have not been convicted and that you, on the
whole, don't have access to anything much. You don't know when you are going to
be released so there is a huge, the bulk really of the prison population is not
getting access to the kinds of things that might be helpful, the sorts of
programs that Robert is talking about and this is not only because they are in
for shorter periods of time and I'm not saying they should be in for longer,
they shouldn't be there on the whole at all because a huge number of those
people have mental health disorder, cognitive disability, are people who cycle
in and out of the criminal justice system, have been connected with the criminal
justice system since they were very young, often have been through juvenile
detention and have had completely disconnected lives from the community outside.
So there is that sense in that Robert just commented on that they're not
job-ready but that is because they have really been living in very chaotic
circumstances for a very long time so one of the things that I would say about
the prison system in Australia is that it would be greatly served, people would
be greatly served, the community would be greatly served if that group of people
did not go to prison at all but were in fact assisted outside because really why
they are going to prison are social problems - not basically criminal problems.
EMILY BOURKE: Hugh De Kretser, from Smart Justice Australia if I can ask you,
what are you seeing as the emerging trends with sentencing? Some moves in New
South Wales to relax bail laws and elsewhere there has been a shift to harsher
sentences?
HUGH DE KRETSER: New South Wales has traditionally imprisoned people at twice
the rate of Victoria for no gains in terms of the safety of the population. The
crime rates in Victoria and New South Wales are similar or lower in Victoria and
so New South Wales is looking at how much they are spending on its prisons, what
effect or lack of effect that is having on the safety for its people and it is
actually looking at reducing its imprisonment rate and particularly looking at
bail laws.
New South Wales has got very tough bail laws. Eileen talked about the number of
people on remand awaiting trial and so that is where they are looking at the
moment to try and work out whether they have got the balance wrong in terms of
protecting the community and, you know, looking at the presumption of innocence
and who should be in jail awaiting trial.
EMILY BOURKE: You've just touched on an economic element to all of this and tell
us a little bit about this idea of justice reinvestment?
HUGH DE KRETSER: Basically, prison doesn't work. It's an extremely expensive
blunt and harmful instrument if you looking at it as a crime control mechanism.
It costs around $90,000 to $100,000 a year to house someone in prison and prison
construction is extremely expensive. We have done analysis here in Victoria;
it's about half a million dollars per prison bed so Victorian jails are at
capacity and the state will be spending literally billions of dollars on prison
expansion to house these people who will be sent through into jail through these
harsher sentencing policies.
An interesting trend coming out of particularly in the US and driven by
conservative politics is politicians saying are taxpayers getting value for
money from prison expansion and the answer is no they're not so justice
reinvestment is an emerging trend where you look at diverting money away from
prisons and the huge cost of prisons towards other things that have been proven
to work in preventing crime in the first place and reducing more victims and it
is something that we should expand and look at more carefully.
In Australia there has been calls for expansion of justice reinvestment from a
range of areas, in particular form Indigenous advocacy groups because the very
high rate in Australia, 14 times more likely to be in jail if you are an
Indigenous Australian so justice reinvestment is all about diverting money away
from prisons towards the programs that will prevent crime in the first place.
EMILY BOURKE: Robert Barco, if I can ask you, the culture within prisons, do you
see that as a driving force for re-offending? What are the problems there?
ROBERT BARCO: Within the prisons themselves you have a number of sub-cultures
but you also have like the general prison culture itself with certain beliefs
and behaviours and I guess, you know prison is pretty much about survival too so
the culture is sort of driven around that.
There is very much sort of "them and us" and breaking away from that is not an
easy thing. But I think when industries came back in which are more sort of
driven at profit now as opposed to actual work skills, a working culture sort of
is developed as well.
I remember back in the more earlier days in the sort of very early '80s,
mid-'80s where there was workshops that had trade skills attached to them, you
had that sort of culture of you know tradesmen-type thing where guys would wear
the bib and brace khaki overalls as opposed to green and floppy tracksuits.
So that culture of prisoner is very much entrenched in there because that is
what driven in as opposed to say the guy with the khaki overalls not wearing the
green. So a lot of those things that your daily life in there contributes to the
culture and I have always tried to push that if that was changed just a little
bit then when the thinking changes the behaviour changes and that is probably
the biggest thing I have found with the prison culture with re-offending is that
the way you think is the way you behave.
So if you are thinking along the lines of prison and prisoner very much so that
is what your behaviours will be say as opposed to thinking along the lines of
having goals like commitment, responsibility and possibility, employment and
life readiness.
It took me many, many years of, you know, changing my thinking, learning
different work skills and getting different educational qualification all
wrapped into sort of one thing to be able to make the changes that I have made
but I think that is possible with anyone but generally yeah,
the prison culture
is sort of the plop along and do your time and survive without too much thought
as to, you know, what is going to happen after that.
EMILY BOURKE: Eileen Baldry, given the political sensitive nature of the
criminal justice system and the law and order auctions that go on in a political
sphere, what are your thoughts on how you deal with this if you are to soften a
policy? How do you sell it?
EILEEN BALDRY: How do you sell it, yeah. Look, the first thing I would say is
that we're not talking about softening policies. I think the real question here
is what kind of society do we want, how do we want people in society to relate
to each other, do we want a society where there are people who are more on the
margins of society, who are more disadvantaged, who have mental health
disorders, who've been through the out of home care system, those sorts of
things, where people who have struggles in meeting everyday living, do we want
to have a society in which we support those people and that we have an inclusive
way of addressing that or do we want to say oh well, you know, let's just kind
of marginalise them.
And the quickest way to marginalise someone is to connect them with the criminal
justice system so that they then become someone entrenched in a completely other
way of living. And what Robert has talked about is the experience of someone,
Robert as you can gather was in for a while and the way in which Robert talked
was all those years of having to re-establish a way of thinking which, or
establish a way of thinking, which wasn't a criminal justice line so I think it
is the wrong question to say you know, how do we convince politicians that you
know, softer policies are okay.
I think it's how do we, what we have to do is convince politicians and the
public that the strongest policy approach is to say we only do things that
create well-being and good outcomes in society and we have the absolute evidence
everywhere in the world that prison does the opposite.
EMILY BOURKE: Hugh de Kretser, what are your thoughts on that message? You are
from the legal field, could people be persuaded, could politicians, could the
public be persuaded?
HUGH DE KRETSER: It is happening in the UK and it is happening in the US and
interestingly it is being driven by the economic reality there so it is the
tight budgets there that are causing people and politicians and conservative
politicians to question why we are spending money on something that doesn't
work.
Underlying the problem in Australia and across the Western world is the
perception that courts are soft on crime, that courts are too lenient and that
perception is reinforced in abstract so if you do a survey in any Western
country and you ask someone on the street do you think courts are too lenient on
criminals, a majority of people will say yes, we do think that but when you
actually give people the same information as a judge about particular crimes and
then ask them to give a hypothetical sentence and you compare that average
sentence to the sentence the court provided or sentenced, on average the courts
get it right and are in touch with community expectations.
So it completely studies where you provide people with the same information as
the courts, completely debunk the myth that courts are out of touch with the
community on sentencing so why do people in the abstract think that courts are
soft, why does the Government in Victoria say courts are handing out hopelessly
inadequate sentences?
It is really driven by media perceptions of crime and so there is plenty of
studies around the world that show that people get their information about crime
from the mainstream media and they typically over estimate the leniency of
courts and they over estimate that crime is going up and particularly violent
crime is going up all the time.
In Australia crime has been dropping and yet it is hard to get that information
out there.
EMILY BOURKE: Hugh de Kretser, from Smart Justice Australia, and before that
Eileen Baldry from University of New South Wales, and former prisoner and now
youth program coordinator, Robert Barco
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