Effective Justice: Reinvesting in the Vulnerable

Australian incarceration rates are at an all-time high, prisons are overcrowded, and the majority of people who spend time in prison re-offend; it is time that prison reform was on the political agenda.

In June this year, the Australian Red Cross released its Vulnerability Report: Rethinking Justice[1]. The report is a serious research contribution on an issue of public policy, and offers a new approach to the Australian prison system. I’ve taken a couple of points from the report, and used them to reach my own conclusion: governments around Australia should pursue a justice reinvestment policy, and seek to change the nature of public debate to advocate for fairer and more effective prisons.

First, let’s think about the aims of the prison system as a whole. While the prison system aims to punish hard criminals and imprison them for the purpose of public safety, it is also intended to rehabilitate petty criminals and deter them from committing future crimes. Most prisoners have short sentences. If we expect these offenders to re-enter the community, it is important that prisons provide rehabilitation programs to facilitate reintegration in a safe and supportive way. Most prisons do provide programs of this nature, although they vary across jurisdictions.[2] Many involve vocational, employment-focused training and cognitive behavioural therapy.

The statistics provided by the Red Cross, however, are damning of Australia’s current prison rehabilitation programs. 9% of all prisoners, and 77% of Indigenous Australian and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, are repeat offenders. 38% of these offenders will be reimprisoned within two years of their release. Given this high recidivism rate, it is impossible to believe that time in prison is a good method of rehabilitation. If anything, at the end of their sentences people leave prison with limited skills and connections, which can lead them into further crimes.

The failure of Australian prisons to provide rehabilitation is not just an issue of efficiency: it is a matter of crime prevention. Imprisonment impacts the families of offenders, who lose fathers, partners, and often an income stream. Research from both the UK and Australia suggests that the children of people with a criminal record are six times more likely to commit a crime than those without.[3] This risk is worse for children whose parents leave prison ill-equipped to find stable employment on their release and are likely to re-offend in future.

The Australian prison system is not just inefficient; it is also unfair. People serving prison time are far more likely to come from complex and disadvantaged backgrounds; they may have experienced unemployment, mental health issues, cognitive impairment, drug and alcohol use, and/or sexual abuse. The Australian justice system does little to account for underlying mental health or substance abuse issues. According to research from the Swinburne University of Technology, prisoners are “two to three times more likely to have a mental illness than those in the community and are 10-15 times more likely to have a psychotic disorder.”[4] If you include people with substance abuse issues, those numbers become even higher.

Time in prison does little, if anything, to address the specific needs of vulnerable people. At the very beginning of the corrections process, many people have limited awareness of their rights with respect both to police questioning and the provision of legal aid. This means that it may not be evident until later in the court process that a potential offender suffers from poor mental health or even substance abuse problems. In prison, correctional rehabilitation programs are not tailored to individuals with multiple problems. Access to mental health services is limited, which is understandable when these services receive so little funding. In my view, it is unfair not to take these underlying factors into consideration in sentencing. It is even worse to expect at-risk people to leave prison and return to communities that are plagued with these problems when they haven’t been adequately supported by correctional rehabilitation programs.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue to be over represented within the corrections system. There are a couple of things to be said here; first, the Indigenous imprisonment rate is 13 times higher than it is for non-Indigenous people in Australia. Second, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples tend to be imprisoned for relatively minor matters that are less likely to result in prison sentences for non-Indigenous people. The higher incarceration rate of Indigenous Australians is a reflection of the broader social and economic disadvantage that their communities face.

There is so much that could be done, however, with a redirected focus on rehabilitation and non-custodial sentencing in Indigenous communities. Woorabinda is an Aboriginal community of 970 people in Central Queensland. The Red Cross has been working with community leaders in Woorabinda for the past nine years on programs that support young people to develop employable skills. The programs are run by other young people in the community, who are role models themselves. The number of young people subject to youth justice orders in Woorabinda has decreased by 55% from 2009 to 2013. Woorabinda is an excellent example of the benefits that can come from an innovative and progressive approach to the corrections system.

You might think that, given the inefficiency and inequality of our prison system, there would be a greater push for reform. In fact, we are seeing the opposite. 2014 saw a 10 year high in imprisonment rates, with 34,000 Australians being incarcerated as of June that year. In 2014, Australia spent $3.4 billion on building and operating prisons, which averages out to $292 per prisoner per day (the ACT actually spends $393.97). Even so, the amount the government spends on prisons can’t keep pace with the increasing rate of prison sentences. The growth in incarceration rates has seen an occupancy rate in prisons of 104.4%. Overcrowding has forced management to add beds to rooms designed only for two people, or house prisoners in shipping containers or in holding cells in police stations.

In the Vulnerability Report, the Red Cross advocates for justice reinvestment. This means that the government would redirect funds away from the operation of prisons into people and communities, to provide support, treatment, and services. These methods can address the underlying issues that confront people who commit less serious offences, including homelessness, poor mental health, deep social exclusion, and lack of education or employment. If the incarceration rate were to reduce by 2% and the government were simply to stop increasing spending on prisons, we would see a $2.3 billion saving over five years. Reinvesting that money into programs that are currently underfunded would make a huge difference.

More fundamentally, it is important that we change the nature of public debate about crime and public safety. Politicians fear advocating for prison reform when they might be criticised for being ‘soft on crime.’ In America, for example, President Obama has only been able to advocate for limited prison reform at the very end of his term. The ‘hard on crime’ or ‘soft on crime’ dichotomy, however, is a false one. Justice reinvestment is not a weak approach, but an efficient and caring one. It is important for advocacy groups such as the Red Cross, and for individuals who are passionate about justice reinvestment, to provide a strong counter-argument to media and political forces who push the ‘tough on crime’ narrative.

People who serve time in prison become targets for re-arrest and re-imprisonment; they struggle to reform social connections that they have lost while inside; they may not receive appropriate treatment, and may not continue to receive that treatment upon release. They are more likely to be homeless. They are more likely to reoffend. They are more likely to experience depression and inflict self-harm. Despite popular opinion, incarcerated people are some of the most vulnerable members of our society. It is time for Australia to rethink justice and look towards a fairer and more effective prison system.