Growing Prison Population
There are few things that set off alarm bells in a political party more readily than a public accusation that they have gone soft on crime. Both sides of politics scrupulously avoid doing anything that could leave them open to this. As a result, the last decade has seen a general toughening of law and order policy.
One manifestation of this is a growing prison population. The Australian Bureau of Statistics says that between 1997 and 2007 the rate of imprisonment in Australia rose by 23 per cent. There are now more than 24,000 people behind bars. Almost a quarter of those held in prison are indigenous, although indigenous Australians make up less than 3 per cent of the total population.
The growth in imprisonment has not been the result of higher crime rates. Surprising as it may seem, for most of the past 10 years, most categories of crime in Australia have been either stable or falling. Imprisonment rates have risen, despite falling crime rates, because more of those charged with criminal offences are being refused bail and more of those convicted of criminal offences are receiving a prison sentence. There is no doubt that sending frequent offenders to prison keeps the crime rate lower than it would otherwise be. Tougher bail policies help reduce the rate at which defendants abscond or reoffend while on bail. As a crime-control tool, however, prison has some very distinct limitations.
To begin with it’s expensive. It costs $240 a day to keep someone in prison. A second problem is that a growing proportion of people charged with criminal offences are being held on remand while awaiting trial. Over the past 10 years the proportion of the Australian prison population on remand has risen from 13 per cent to 22 per cent. The disturbing thing about the growth in remand is that a large percentage of those refused bail end up having the charges against them dismissed. Many of those who are convicted, on the other hand, receive a non-custodial sanction.
In NSW more than 12 per cent of those refused bail are acquitted or have all charges against them dismissed. More than one in three of those refused bail receive a non-custodial sentence. A third problem is that, like most things that cost a lot of money, prison brings diminishing marginal returns.
Imprisoning serious or prolific offenders prevents a lot of crime. But the wider we cast the net of imprisonment, the less cost-effective prison becomes.
A fourth problem is that nearly all those 24,000 prisoners will sooner or later have to be released. If we don’t do anything to help them back into the community, many will go straight back into crime.
In NSW, 60 per cent of those released from prison will be convicted of a further offence within two years. The fact is we cannot rely solely on imprisonment if we want to get value for our crime-control dollar. Nor can we rely solely on measures that do nothing more than subject offenders in the community to greater surveillance. Overseas research shows that intensive supervision of offenders, on its own, does nothing to reduce the risk of reoffending.
To make intensive supervision work, it has to be combined with measures that tackle the underlying causes of offending (for example, drug and alcohol dependence, poor social skills, unemployment). Programs that do this can reduce the rate of reoffending by as much as 20 per cent. Spending money on rehabilitation programs and services can easily be lampooned as being kind to criminals. In truth it’s nothing more or less than enlightened commonsense.
Dr Don Weatherburn, Director, NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, SMH, 06/02/08
