The High Cost of Australian Prisons
Australia has experienced a great increase in the rate of incarceration for some years. The increase has also been parallel to the demand for funding to cater for the increasing number of prisoners. Apart from that, there has been an increasing number of re-offenders, increased rates of custodial sentences on the breach of the parole, and increased rates of juvenile offenses. A response to this problem has seen with some scholars, legal officers, government agencies as well as private organizations contemplating the idea of crime prevention and justice reinvestment. This essay aims to provide an overview of the understanding of both JR and crime prevention. The paper will explain the concepts of the two approaches, draw their rationale from different areas such as the principle of proportionality, and also look at the implementation of these approaches in other countries.
Australian prisons are expensive, and the spending is growing at a rapid rate. An analysis of the data from 2010 to 2015 showed that the spending in Australian prisons has even exceeded the average amount in OECD, the 12.5% (Bushnell, 2017). On the part of the police, the report by (Productivity Commission, 2017) showed that the number of police has reached 295 per 100,000 in one year, that is between 2015 and 2016. Besides, in some sections like the Northern Territory, this level has grown to over 700 per 100,000 (Productivity Commission, 2017).
An inference from this report demonstrates that Australia’s policing level has grown higher than any of the common law countries. With the same number increasing, the country has also increased the number of operational police staff from 89.5% in the year 2009-10 to 91% for the year2015-16 (Productivity Commission, 2017). The increase in the number of police had a notable impact on the security of the country. The latest report from the (Australian Bureau of Statistics., 2017) showed a six percent increase in the number of adult prisoners in corrective services. This number represents an increase from 38,845 to 41,202 prisoners between 30 June 2016 and 30 June 2017. A look at the national imprisonment also showed a four percent increase in the year between 2016 and 2017, and this rate represents 208 to 216 prisoners for every 100,000 adult’s population. One problem with this growth is that it is causing a serious issue such as prison overcrowding, which also translates to a demand for funding. For instance, the analysis of (Productivity Commission, 2017) reported an expenditure of almost $15.3 billion between 2014-2015.
Many commentators believe that the punitive penal policies, the parole reforms, and sentencing could be one of the main contributors to the rising number of incarcerations (Australia Senate Parliament, Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, & Wright, 2013). Others such as (Cunneen, 2011) attributed the rising number to the frequent imprisonments, and their long length of stay where prisoners are sentences for long terms of service. On the other hand, some authors believe that factors that are either social or economic could be some of the contributors to the increased crime rate, which should be addressed alongside other approaches of the justice system (Liu, Song, & Xiu, 2016).
Challenges of Australian Policing
The answers to the current problem of Australian policing and correction can be found in the human right principles of proportionality (POP). The obvious reason why the answer can be found in the POP it’s because much the police work involves a limitation of one or more human rights. For instance, arrests, criminal procedures, and incarceration limit someone’s liberty among other rights. Unnecessary arrests and incarceration are some of the high contributors to the rising demand for the rising population in jails and the demand for additional funding, and this would be dealt with later.
According to (Clear & Austin, 2009), the easiest way to understand how the size of the population in prisons add up is looking at the number of people going to prisons, and the length of their stay. What these authors meant is that apart from just looking at the prisons, and then blame the judicial sentencing, there is a need to also look at other factors that contribute to that numbers. Among these factors, (Clear, Cole, & Reisig, 2011) states that the flaw in the supervision of those people who leave the prisons is a major contributor for recidivism. Likewise, the POP recommends that any statutes, action or means that affect limit human rights must be reasonable or proportionate. Proportionality constitutes three sub-principles. These are the adequacy of the action, its necessity, and proportionality stricto sensu (Bendor & Sela, 2015). The sub-principle of adequacy establishes that all actions that affect human right should be the most valid for achieving the sought solution. For instance, if the unemployment becomes the leading cause of breaking the law, sending the lawbreakers to jail would not be the suitable aim of ending unemployment related crimes. If lack of awareness or inducement into a particular crime is causing the public to break a particular law, principles os proportionate would offer an alternative where the court order public education or removal of the element that is inducing citizens to the crime.
The second sub-principle is the necessity. This more of a question whether the chosen action such as arresting, is it necessary for that particular situation? Could there be another option such as criminal preventative means that would have delivered the same resorts without arresting or sending the person to jail? For instance, instead of focusing on arresting law offenders where environmental design is the main contributor, the work of (Lee, Park, & Jung, 2016), suggests that redesigning the environment can deter people from engaging into crimes. Once the two sub-principles have been certified, the third one requires for a determination whether limiting someone’s right is reasonable stricto sensu. The principle requires the authorities to ensure that the advantages of the action surplus the disadvantages. And considering the situations at the correction and policing of Australia, the rationale is fading away.
Justice reinvestment (JR) is an approach that started in the United States that is meant to reduce the spending required for the management of the corrections (Schwartz, Brown, & Cunneen, 2017). Once the spending is cut, the saved resources are then reinvested back to the community by financing the strategies for reducing crimes (Schwartz et al., 2017). The united states Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center started promoting JR approaches in 2006 whose impact has shown a reduction of prison population from about 4,000 to 3,200 between 2006 and 2011(Austin & Coventry, 2014). The work of (DeMichele & Payne, 2009) defines JR as a ‘comprehensive strategy’ for countering the increasing population in prisons by using the technology for determining a more effective way of management of the offenders and finding the factors that drive them to offenses.
Understanding Crime Prevention and Justice Reinvestment
According to (Australia Senate Parliament et al., 2013), JR is a four-step process. The first one involves analyzing the criminal justice trends with the aim of understanding the factors that cause the growth of prison and jail population. The second stage involves implementing policies that generate savings while still increasing public safety. The third stage involves quantification of the savings, and a reinvestment in the high-risked communities while still employing other applicable prevention strategies. Lastly, the commission dealing with JR has to conduct an analysis of the impact yielded by the policies and reinvestment the resources. Also, this fourth process involves ensuring that the criminal justice system and policies are effective, and enhance their accountability where necessary.
The main themes of JR are to develop a coherent and evidence-based social policy through the use of data to enhance collecting and prevent crimes. The policies should also be targeted towards people who are at risk. Typically, this involves identifying and working with the released offenders to prevent reoffending. Another theme is the investment in the neighborhoods where most offenders are housed, and improving social welfare services to curb the underlying problems that cause people to engage in crimes. The approaches should also develop interventions that are holistically aimed at reducing offending. While looking at the law, a revision on the punitive laws that cause people to go to prison even for petty offenses can have a large impact on the population. The laws relating to probations/parole should be revised and increase awareness that can prevent breach rates. There should also be an investment in education programs to ensure awareness of the law, addiction, and treatment of mental illnesses. All these themes should be included in the four stages of JR as discussed above.
The report by the (South Australian Justice Reinvestment Working Group, 2013) states that strategies of JR are based on the facts that the highest number of offenders are people who come from small communities, and they return back to those communities after their service. According to this report, JR needs to involve approaches that are based on short-term, medium and long-term goals. The funding for tailoring the correction programs would instead go to the communities to strengthen them in a way they would be able to address the factors for the increased crime rates as a way of preventing their community members from facing the criminal justice systems, and also help in the integration of the ex-prisoners (Allen, 2011).
JR has recently been implemented in various developed countries that are comparable to Australia. For instance, in the US, JR strategies have been implemented in several states. According to (Carson & Sabol, 2012), about 16 states have adopted the models. Positive impacts of JR were recorded with a decline in prison numbers by 0.9 percent in 2011. Also, states such as Texas and Michigan are named as examples of the states who have had positive impacts of JR. In Texas, the government managed to reinvest 241 million dollars while Michigan was able to reduce their prison numbers 45,478 inmates, which was a decrease of 6000 (Australia Senate Parliament et al., 2013).
Human Rights Principles of Proportionality
One major development in shifting from imprisonment to prevention has been marked by the Washington State legislature’s move to abandoned their plans on building the two large prison facilities and instead approved spending of 48 million dollars on evidence-based interventions and strategies for crime prevention programs (Drake, Aos, & Miller, 2009). There are two important lessons learned from this move. The first one is that scientific reports can also bring changes to the political arena, and the second one is that the scientific analysis proved that other methods other than incarceration are not only effective, but they also generate significant financial reserves.
While looking at crime rates, (Heerde et al., 2018) states that different crimes like theft, violence, and drugs dealings are some of the costly and serious issues internationally, and these behaviors start at adolescence and/or in early adulthood. While the cost of crimes in Australia was estimated by (Smith, Jorna, Sweeney, & Fuller, 2014) as reaching $47.6 billion every year, the (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2014) reported that most of the offenders were between 15 and 19 years old, and juveniles both male and females were involved in theft, drugs offenses, and intent to cause injuries. Most programs for crime prevention focus on reducing neighborhood crimes and improving neighborhood conditions. Despite the fact that these programs primarily focus on reducing the pervasiveness of criminal activities, some studies have shown that their positive impacts on the way people perceive both the crimes and the risk of victimization (Foster, Hooper, Knuiman, & Giles-Corti, 2016). Other scholars (Cohen et al., 2009) have also found that neighborhood improvement has the potential of making residents feel safer.
In respect of the crimes committed by juveniles and young adults, some states such as the U.S. have increasingly implemented situational crime prevention (SCP) strategies, particularly in schools to prevent crimes through situational controls and environmental designs. Impacts of these measures have been studied by different scholars who have reported different levels of efficacy. For instance, while investigating how school-based crimes can be prevented through SCP policies, the work of (Sevigny & Zhang, 2016) found that SCP reduced levels of certain violent crimes depending on specific limitations.
The work of (Miller, 2014) emphasizes supervised probations as a strategy for crime prevention. One rationale in probation enhancement is that they significantly reduce the population in prisons strategies. In particular, (Miller, 2014), focuses on probation tactics such as direct involvement of probationers to aid in crime risk avoidance, surveillance, supporting families and working with juveniles on a routine basis.
Conclusion
A quick solution is required for the already criminal justice system in Australia. s criminal justice system. One fact that this paper pointed out is that despite the major investments in both the police and correction sectors, Australia has been outperformed by most of the comparable developed states. As discussed in this paper, there are different strategies that the Australian government can employ to rationalize the criminal justice system which would have two different positive impacts. The first one would be a reduction in the funding required, and the second one is that the strategies would maximize the community safety. The first strategy involves restructuring the punitive criminal justice system as a way of curbing the rising growing incarceration rates and their accompanying expenses. What this means is that instead of having a general approach of focusing the resources the offenders, the system can instead target only those offenders who are a major risk to the community. Offenders who do not pose much risk can be awarded other alternatives such as home detention, probation, community servicing, restitution and fines. Again, non-violent offenders and restitution orders should be implemented and expanded for nonviolent, low-risk offenders.
Sub-Principles of Proportionality: Adequacy, Necessity, and Reasonableness
References
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