Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises that:

(a) the Australian incarceration rate has risen from 117 prisoners per 100,000 adults in 1991 to 172 prisoners per 100,000 adults in 2010;

(b) since the Indigenous Deaths in Custody Report was released in 1991, the Indigenous incarceration rate has risen from 1739 prisoners per 100,000 adults to 2303 prisoners per 100,000 adults; and

(c) an increasing number of Australian children have a parent behind bars; and

(2) encourages governments at all levels to pursue innovative policies to reduce crime and incarceration rates, including:

(a) investing in early intervention programs to deter young people from crime;

(b) where appropriate, considering alternatives to incarceration such as weekend detention, periodic detention, restorative justice and drug courts;

(c) employing smart policing strategies, such as using real-time crime statistics to identify and target crime hotspots;

(d) establishing in-prison education, training and rehabilitation programs aimed at reducing recidivism and improving family relationships for prisoners with children; and

(e) implementing randomised policy trials (akin to the 1999 NSW Drug Court randomised trial) to rigorously evaluate the impact of criminal justice interventions.

When the Indigenous deaths in custody report was released in 1991, there was widespread shock at the level of Indigenous incarceration in Australia, at 1,739 prisoners per 100,000 Indigenous adults. Yet over the past 20 years the Indigenous incarceration rate has increased by about 30 per cent. Today, 2,303 out of every 100,000 Indigenous adults are behind bars. By their mid-20s, 40 per cent of Indigenous men have been formally charged by police with a crime.

This reflects a general increase in incarceration in Australia, with the national imprisonment rate rising from 117 prisoners per 100,000 adults in 1991 to 172 prisoners per 100,000 adults now. For the most part, the growth in Australia's prison population has been driven not by a rise in crime but by law changes, such as tougher bail conditions and mandatory non-parole periods. These policies can sometimes cost society a lot without much changing the incentives for offenders. Increasing sentence lengths from 10 to 15 years may sound tough, but if you are dealing with someone who lives from day to day—or, in economic jargon, a person with a high discount rate—it could have no impact on crime rates. Indeed, Steven Durlauf and Daniel Nagin argue that the certainty of the punishment matters more than its size.

There are many admirable things about the United States, as President Obama reminded us in this chamber last week. But one concerning trend is their increased incarceration. US jails currently hold over two million people, more than one per cent of the adult population. Among men aged 20 to 34 who did not complete high school, the US imprisonment rate is a jaw-dropping 12 per cent for whites and 37 per cent for blacks. And that is just the proportion behind bars on any given day. If you are an African-American man who does not finish high school, the odds are two in three that you will see the inside of a prison cell by the time you reach your mid-30s.

Another feature of persistently high incarceration rates is its intergenerational impact. In the US today, two per cent of white children and 11 per cent of African-American children have a parent behind bars. In the US, there are as many children with a jailed parent as there are prisoners. In Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics do not count the number of prisoners with children—although I think they should—but, if the US pattern holds up, that would mean that there are about 30,000 Australian children with a parent in jail today. We know that children with a parent in jail are more likely to commit crimes themselves. If you believe in family values, you should be committed to reducing Australian incarceration rates. I commend organisations such as SHINE for Kids for their work with children of prisoners.

This motion is not the first to recognise such a parlous state of affairs. In its report Doing timetime for doing, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs described Indigenous incarceration rates as a 'shameful state of affairs', and made 40 recommendations to government for addressing the issue. I commend the chair of the committee, the member for Blair, and the members of the committee for their analysis of this issue, which was discussed at last week's meeting of Commonwealth, State and Territory Attorneys-General, the body formerly known as SCAG. The Neumann report will be an important document in shaping this debate over years to come.

I know this is also an issue that concerns the Attorney-General personally. In his Lionel Murphy lecture at ANU in September, the Attorney referred to Lionel Murphy's great 1982 High Court judgment of Neal v R. Mr Neal, an Aboriginal man from Queensland, had been sentenced to six months hard labour for swearing and spitting at a store owner. Arguing for the conviction to be overturned, Murphy wrote, 'Mr Neal is entitled to be an agitator.' Yet, if he were alive today, Lionel Murphy would be appalled to know how much the incarceration rate has risen in the ensuing three decades.

A number of public figures have spoken on this issue, including judges Stephen Rothman, Stephen Norrish, my former employer Michael Kirby, and Western Australian MLA Paul Papalia, who promotes what he calls 'justice reinvestment'. As head of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, Don Weatherburn has done a great deal to promote an evidence based debate. While I am acknowledging people, I thank Jess Woodall, who interned in my office and is here in the gallery. She wrote the motion we are debating today. Also, I am very glad Jess has brought her mum, Robyn Woodall, along.

Over the past year, I have also appreciated the chance to visit the ACT's Alexander Maconochie Centre and Bimberi Youth Justice Centre, which struck me as very different from my visit to the old style Parramatta and Long Bay jails as a student journalist in 1993. I have also appreciated learning about the community policing work being led by ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell and ACT Chief Police Officer Roman Quaedvlieg. For example, ACT Policing are drawing on mental health experts and local Indigenous leaders such as Duncan Smith. They are also using case officers to work intensively with the 12 families who are responsible for a quarter of all property crimes in Canberra.

Nationwide, the total cost of Australia's prisons is nearly $3 billion a year, or about $100,000 per prisoner. By spending money on addressing the underlying costs of crime, society gets to avoid the costs of both the crime and the punishment.

Criminologists describe four reasons for incarceration: retribution, deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation, yet for some the criminogenic effect of prisons outweighs any rehabilitative effect. The median sentence length in Australia is three years, so released prisoners find it hard to get a job and often discover that the only friends who have not deserted them are the ones they made inside.

Sexual violence in prison is probably not as common as in the 1990s when New South Wales Magistrate David Heilpern estimated that one-quarter of young male prisoners were raped, but the rate is likely higher than in the outside world.

In the short time available, it is impossible to do justice to the evidence on what works to reduce crime and incarceration, but I commend to the House a 2006 paper prepared by the Washington State Institute of Public Policy, which reviewed 571 evaluations. Among the programs that they found to have the largest effect are prevention programs such as nurse-family partnerships and high-quality early childhood programs targeted at very disadvantaged families. For juveniles, education programs and aggression replacement training were effective, while the 'Scared Straight' program actually increased offending. For adults, vocational training and programs for offenders with mental illness were particularly effective.

On this issue, as with others, we need to raise the evidence bar. To illustrate this, let me tell a story. When I was 22, I clashed with Bob Carr over the issue of criminal justice. Carr, as opposition leader, had complained publicly about gangs roaming the streets of Sydney: 'their baseball caps turned back to front'. As a Labor candidate in the 1995 New South Wales election, I spoke at the New South Wales ALP conference—wearing a baseball cap turned back to front. My argument was that a tough-on-crime strategy ends up incarcerating the poor. Bob Carr's argument was that it is the poor who are most likely to be victims of crime. Both arguments are right. While we can point to examples of white-collar crime, most offences involve a low-income victim and a low-income perpetrator. If you care about reducing hard-core poverty, you should be interested in smarter criminal justice policies.

Yet it was the Carr government who in 1999 put in place one of the most innovative criminal justice strategies—a drug court. Offenders are referred to the drug court from local or districts courts, undergo a detoxification program and are then dealt with by the drug court instead of a traditional judicial process. At the time it was established, the number of places in detoxification was limited, so participants in the evaluation were randomly assigned to either the treatment group or the control group. They were then matched to court records to measure reoffending rates. The evaluation found that the drug court was effective in reducing the rate of recidivism. The drug court was more expensive than the traditional judicial process but it more than paid for itself in lower crime.

Another Australian randomised evaluation is the trial of restorative justice conducted by John Braithwaite and Heather Strang in Canberra. Together with other international randomised trials, this has helped build the evidence that, for low-level offences, restorative justice makes victims feel better and reduces overall crime levels.

As a public policy 'randomista', I firmly believe that we need more randomised evaluations of criminal justice policies if we are to figure out what works and what does not. Some of our justice policies clearly do not work—the trouble is, we are not sure which ones. We need to raise the evidence bar. Getting justice policy right is not easy, but if there is one country that can show the way it should be Australia: the nation that showed the world that if they are given a chance, convicts can do just as well as anyone.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Dr Leigh's motion concerning the increasing incarceration rates of Australian citizens, and particularly those of Indigenous Australians. This issue is an important one. The figures quoted in the motion are alarming and should make all Australians, particularly policy makers, stop, think and reflect. The Australian incarceration rate has increased from 117 prisoners per 100,000 adults in 1991 to 172 prisoners in 2010. The Indigenous rate has increased from 1,739 per 100,000 adults to 2,303 over the same period. This Indigenous incarceration rate is particularly alarming as it is high to start with—Indigenous people make up 22 per cent of the prison population and yet comprise only two per cent of the overall population—and this high rate has been increasing ever since the landmark Aboriginal deaths in custody report in 1991. We thought that this report would see the turnaround in incarceration rates of Indigenous people in Australia, but it has not. It has clearly failed in its intent.

I congratulate the member for Fraser for raising this issue today in his motion. But it is here that my congratulations end and my disappointment begins. I am disappointed because I expected more from the member for Fraser in analysing the problem and prescribing some policy solutions that might make a demonstrable difference , b ut in this motion he does not do this. His analysis and his policy prescriptions of the issues are typical of Left L iberal thinking that has characterised the issue for many, many years. I believe that Dr Leigh is better than this.

The motion itself is largely unobjectionable. It calls for more early intervention; more alternatives to incarceration, such as restorative justice and drug courts; smarter policing strategies; in- prison education; and more research. That is, the motion is based on a strong belief in diversion, education and early intervention as ways of tackling the issue of high and ever-increasing incarceration rates. Some of these policies can be useful. I accept that. Drug courts, in particular, have been shown to be beneficial in this regard.

We should work on the things that Dr Leigh and the Labor Party have raised in this motion. But those things alone will not make a substantial difference, and this is my core criticism. The motion puts too much hope in i ntervention and diversion alone, whereas we need to acknowledge that a breakdown in norms and self-perpetuating substance abuse epidemics are major causes of crime . We need to tackle those factors head on and with great determination. Dr Don Weatherburn and Noel Pearson have been some of the strongest critics of the approach that this motion advocates. Noel Pearson refers to the sausage machine of the criminal justice system, where Indigenous people are the meat in the machine. He says:

That is, everybody from police to legal aid, diversionary programs, probationary programs and corrective services all basically see the goal as ensuring proper safe and fair procedures and facilities for the meat to get processed through the machine and turned into sausages.

He goes on to say:

Almost all the academic and policy focus on Indigenous criminal justice has been focused on making the most human-rights-compliant sausage machine. And there are those who daydream about simple solutions such as inserting a gate to stop people from being imprisoned. But where does that leave us? The last thing communities want is offenders left to continue wreaking destruction.

The sausage machine paradigm exists because there has been an unwillingness to tackle the immediate behaviours that give rise to offences, such as substance abuse ...

Dr Don Weatherburn, Director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, is equally to the point, where he says that the leading cause of Aboriginal overrepresentation in prison is not systemic bias or lack of diversion programs or education program but is the 'high rates of involvement in serious crime'. That is what it is. It is the high rate of involvement in serious crime. It is this fact that this motion and the Left Liberals do not acknowledge and do not address.

Yes, it is unpleasant to state this. But by not stating it does not mean that it does not exist. Worse, it can continue a fabrication that all we need to concentrate on as policymakers is on being nicer, having more education and early intervention programs and a better criminal justice system, and then everything will be rosy. Unfortunately, it will not be.

So what is to be done? The first step is to acknowledge the reality that high rates of imprisonment are due to high rates of serious crime. That is the reality. Next is to address head-on the causes of the high rates of serious crime, to tackle the behaviours that give rise to offences—such as the behaviours that Noel Pearson referred to: substance abuse, abandonment of personal responsibility for one's actions and disrespect for neighbours and for community standards.

The most important thing in this list is alcohol and drug abuse. General poverty and disadvantage are of course factors here and we need to be addressing these, but the categorical research from Weatherburn, Snowball and Hunter is that the highest predictor of imprisonment, even after controlling for a wide range of other factors associated with economic disadvantage, was high use of alcohol and drugs. Anyone who has been to remote Indigenous communities is only too aware of this, where alcohol is the poison that runs through these communities. This is the most important thing for us to tackle head-on if we are fair dinkum about reducing incarceration rates, particularly for Indigenous peoples.

There has been some movement in this area to deal with alcohol and substance abuse, but not enough. We need to be tougher at restricting supply of alcohol and drugs through alcohol management plans and through income quarantining—so there is less cash available to purchase those substance—and we need to do more to enforce existing laws more strongly. Concurrently, other mechanisms to rebuild the social fabric of remote Indigenous communities need to be addressed. We need to insist on 100 per cent school attendance at high-quality schools in the remote communities. We need welfare reform so that people are working and are not encouraged to stay on welfare. We need to give authority back to the elders—like what occurs in Cape York through the Family Responsibilities Commission.

This motion is weak because it does not mention any of those things. It does not mention that the high rate of imprisonment is due to high rates of crime. The motion does not mention alcohol or drugs anywhere. It does not mention the need to rebuild social and community norms.

I will conclude by examining some statistics from Mornington Island, which is almost exclusively an Indigenous community. I have in front of me the murder and suicide rates for Mornington Island from the beginning of the 20th century until the end of the 20th century. Between 1900 and the end of the 1970s there was one murder and one suicide. In the subsequent two decades there were 13 murders and 22 suicides. In those subsequent two decades we had enormous investment in infrastructure, enormous investment in education and the formal elimination of systemic racism. Opportunities opened up for Indigenous people through those decades and yet the murder rate, the suicide rate and the rate of other crimes increased dramatically. I understand—and other people will say—that these statistics are apparent in all other communities as well. But in the last couple of decades there has been alcohol abuse, welfare dependency and a breakdown in these communities. That is what is causing the high crime rate, and it is the high crime rate that is causing the high incarceration rate.

These are the things that this motion should address but does not address. So, while the intent of the motion is good and while the measures that are outlined in the motion are unobjectionable, the motion does not get to the root cause of the problem of the high incarceration rate in our country. They are the things that I have mentioned: substance abuse, welfare dependence and the breakdown of communities. We need to tackle these head-on.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Fraser for bringing this very important motion to the House. As the member of one of the 10 most socioeconomic disadvantaged electorates in Australia, I welcome the opportunity to address the issues of incarceration and juvenile detention and their impact on the broader community. These are issues that I have grappled with for some time as a member of parliament. I have done so with the help and advice of some very remarkable people. For this reason, today I want to speak about the work of a philanthropic organisation known as the Bridge of Hope Foundation and its plans to create a social revolution, one dedicated to addressing the very issues that the motion by the member for Fraser raises. This has particular relevance to the government's $304 million Social Inclusion Agenda.

I first became aware of the Bridge of Hope Foundation about two years ago when I was approached by its founding member and executive officer, Mr John Walsh. Mr Walsh told me about his plans to establish an organisation that would enable all sectors of the community to work together to address the cause and effect of generational disadvantage. A key tool in this process would be the formation of a Bridge of Hope Foundation roundtable alliance made up of members who were recognised experts in their fields and already had established networks. Mr Walsh went on to explain that the current system of dealing with youth at risk, young single mothers, children with a parent in prison and newly released prisoners often lacked much needed common sense and, above all, a whole-of-government approach.

One can only begin to grasp the enormity of this problem when faced with statistics that show that 12,000 children in Victoria have a parent in prison. On a national basis, this number rises to approximately 38,000. Research also shows that early intervention programs targeted at at-risk youth are the most cost-effective way of reducing crime. Mr Walsh has taken all these factors into account and come up with a proposal known as the Bridge of Hope solutions model. The Bridge of Hope model, like the federal government's Social Inclusion Agenda, puts addressing entrenched disadvantage as paramount to Australia's future and as paramount in addressing some of the issues that we are discussing here today.

In this regard, we have approached the Minister for Social Inclusion, Tanya Plibersek, to have the Bridge of Hope model included as a prototype for the program that the government is rolling out. We are very much hoping to trial this in my electorate for the first time. The case for trialling the Bridge of Hope model in Calwell is a very strong one, especially when one considers that 25 per cent of the Victorian prison population comes from 14 postcodes out of a total of 647. My electorate is one of those 14 postcodes.

The Bridge of Hope solutions model is a low-cost, volunteer-driven initiative, visualised to empower communities to form partnerships with government as well as experts in mentoring and mental health. In practical terms this involves a coordinated approach in what I like to describe as a process of joining the dots. This process, will involve identifying clients through Centrelink and Corrections Victoria in order to put them in touch with services best suited to their circumstances. Trained volunteers from Rotary and Probus clubs will take on a mentoring role and provide ongoing long-term support in order to ensure individual objectives are achieved.

Research shows that almost half of all Australian juveniles released from detention will be imprisoned as adults, largely because they lack family support and education. For this reason the Bridge of Hope solutions model also addresses in-house prison education with its Stepping Stones crossover program. The crossover aspect means that rather than discontinue the in-prison program at the time of an inmate's release, the program will cross over with the inmate and assist with housing and employment and provide access to a mentor or a friend.

Student education is another vital aspect that is crucial to the success of the Bridge of Hope solutions model. The Bridge of Hope schools program is based on the knowledge that vulnerable youth are inclined to believe that (a) it is considered tough to go to prison and that (b) it is cool to hate cops. The Bridge of Hope Foundation has proposed to debunk these negative mindsets by substituting them with positive mentoring. It is believed that the discipline and focus shown by those in the Army, for example, will serve as a solid foundation for vulnerable youth. Police officers, as well as rehabilitated prisoners, will also be encouraged to share their experiences as part of the program. It is proposed that this program will be similar to the social impact bonds trials currently being conducted in New South Wales. The benefits of the bonds is that they will reduce policing, criminal investigation, prosecution and judicial costs. (Time expired)

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion before us seemingly portrays incarceration as a bad thing and the people who are incarcerated are somehow victims rather than criminals. But people who are incarcerated are criminals. This motion ignores the root cause of incarceration: criminals and crime. Ignoring this and trying to find a treatment for the symptom, such as considering alternatives to incarceration such as weekend detention, will not only do nothing to fix the problem but will actually make it worse.

I weighed up the things that this motion asks us to do in terms of how effective they would be in fixing the problem. Some of the suggestions in there should simply be rejected out of hand. Why do I say that? Because a lot of them are already happening. To suggest that smart policing should be brought in is an insult to those engaged in policing. To suggest that we should provide education in prison is also an insult to those in corrective services and their contractors who are already providing those services. The closest thing in this motion to a suggestion to treat the cause of crime is the suggestion to invest in early intervention programs to deter young people from crime. At least that addresses the problem: the creation of criminals.

Despite the sentiment of the motion, we already have a deterrent and I have to say that it is one that we do not use enough. It is called 'going to jail'. It is the namby-pamby culture that we have allowed to develop that has neutered this deterrent. The problem is not that there are too many people in jail; the problem is that not enough people who commit heinous crimes against law-abiding citizens and their communities are going to jail. Any member in this place who is in touch with their electorate will know that people are sick and tired of seeing thugs do the crime without having to do the time. I did a tiny bit of research and found several dozen instances just in north Queensland in my electorate where criminals committed crimes for which most people would think they should be locked up for some period but they went walking free on probation. I have here an article about a 20-year-old who committed nine crimes, including burglary, trespass and drug possession. He scared an old lady when she found him in her kitchen and he tried to grab her handbag from her. He went on 15 months probation.

Another young fellow, 17 years old and a repeat offender, had a mate who stole a government vehicle and had a tussle with a government youth services employee—someone who is supposed to be helping him. He ended up taking keys from him, grabbed the car and took our repeat offender on a joyride to Collinsville, who has ended up on probation for 12 months. There was a woman who punched a policeman in the face; she received a $600 fine and 15 months probation.

I could go on and on with this sort of stuff. The community expects people who commit such crimes to be incarcerated but the reality is that they are not. Governments, magistrates and the courts need to realise that if someone commits a serious crime the community does want to see them jailed. A part of that is for rehabilitation; another part of that is for punishment.

We forget that these people should be punished. They are criminals; they have committed a crime. The criminals that we are breeding know that they actually will not go to jail and that they will not get punished. They keep committing crimes, starting with petty crimes and graduating to more serious ones. They know that they can be caught time and time again and that they will keep on getting warnings and probations. You just have to look through newspaper reports to see that in the court reporting.

They keep pushing the boundaries because they cannot even get the proverbial slap on the wrist. The namby-pamby state outlawed that. Sometimes they push too far and they do find themselves in jail because they commit something that even a magistrate cannot look the other way on. By that time they have carved out their little criminal life and they think they are being harshly treated by having their freedom taken away from them for a few months.

By reserving jail time only for the most serious of crimes we are encouraging crimes of an increasingly disgusting and disrespectful nature. This motion does call for innovative ways to reduce crime and incarceration, but here is one: what about punishment—proper punishment that means something and which acts as a deterrent? Proper punishment is not weekend detention or periodic detention; that is stuff that you give to a 13-year-old—you ground them. Taking away someone's PlayStation and sending them to the watch-house for the weekend is not going to be a serious deterrent in anyone's eyes. A serious deterrent is adequate jail sentencing of criminals who do crimes which the community thinks they should be jailed for. (Time expired)

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After the previous contribution I would like to bring people back to the real world. As for people not being incarcerated: in the last state elections the new Liberal Party attorney-general of New South Wales, Greg Smith, did something that has been long overdue. He called for a stop in the race between Labor and Liberal to imprison more people, to create more jails and to spend millions more dollars with regard to incarceration.

And as for people not being jailed, in New South Wales an estimated 50,000 people a year go through our jail system. Increasingly they are people on remand—people who have not been sentenced and people who have subsequently been found to be innocent. It is costing the Australian taxpayer an increasing amount of money. Between 2002-03 and 2006-07 the annual expenditure on prisons in New South Wales went up by four per cent. This increase is greater than what we are spending on the police force. It is also interesting to note that 60,000 Australian children a year are affected by their family members being in jail.

The member for Aston talked about respect and about Aboriginals taking responsibility for themselves et cetera, somehow implying that this was perhaps not integral to their reality. It is interesting to note that these areas of discrimination about who is in prison are universal; they are international. In the United States blacks, who constitute 12.6 per cent of the population, constitute 39.4 per cent of the prison population. Hispanics constitute 16.3 per cent of the population but constitute 20.6 per cent of the prison population.

Michelle Alexander in the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness has commented that the United States currently imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. I have had the opportunity of being in the Netherlands to see a system that is regarded internationally as very progressive, but you see the same pattern there: the Surinamese—people from Dutch Guiana in South America—have incredibly higher incarceration rates than the general population.

There are certain other characteristics of those in prison. I refer to the inquiry undertaken by the Liberal Party MLC in New South Wales, John Ryan, in 2002 with regard to New South Wales prisons. He showed that 60 per cent of people in prisons are fundamentally illiterate, 60 per cent of them do not have year 10 education, 64 per cent of them do not have a stable family and greater than 60 per cent of them have a history with illicit drugs. It is interesting to note that in the current failure and the increasing money that we are spending on this system that one-third of New South Wales prisoners are re-imprisoned within two years. We have to ask ourselves whether that is money that is well spent. As I said, this has more to do with people's socio-economic circumstances, with their ethnicity, with their problems with mental disorders and with regard to their educational limits than it does with believing that this can somehow be cured by showing respect to people.

There was an interesting article in last week's Guardian Weekly by George Monbiot:

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results with the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients.

Elsewhere in the article:

In their book, Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that, as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school.

There is a clear correlation in this country between incarceration rates and people who have dysfunctional families, who have psychiatric disorders and who have deprivation in life.

There are measures that can be undertaken. One simple one that has been suggested in my local area is bail houses to make sure that people who are homeless and who cannot get bail actually have another option rather than going to jail while they are waiting for their case to be heard.

I recommend the resolution, and I particularly stress the socio-economic factors in imprisonment rates in this country.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In debating the motion before the House I want to direct my comments towards one of the key points raised by the member for Fraser—that is, the issue of investing in early intervention programs to deter young people from crime. As I am sure the member would acknowledge, the motion itself is very broad and is worthy of perhaps a much longer debate in this place. I do commend the member for bringing these issues to the attention of the House and I also acknowledge the previous speaker, who raised some of the complex issues in relation to education, substance abuse and mental health. It is a very complex problem that we are talking about and it would do the House well to revisit it in the weeks and months ahead.

When it comes to crime, obviously prevention is much better than cure, and our efforts to tackle incarceration rates must start before the crime has been committed. Before we even start worrying about some of those other issues in relation to the alternatives to incarceration, we need to do better at preventing the crime from occurring in the first place. Many times in the past I have stood in this place and talked about the issue of street violence and antisocial behaviour and the need for a national approach and more resources to combat the problem.

While policing is primarily a state based issue, we do have a national epidemic of violence and drunkenness which demands a national approach. Across every jurisdiction in Australia there are different regulations around issues such as liquor licensing, different policing methods to combat crime and different penalties for offenders. While I am not standing here advocating a one-size-fits-all approach, I am supportive of a more national strategy to combat the emerging culture of disrespect and the lack of empathy which allows some people—and, I stress, a minority of people—to attack others without any thought of the potentially fatal consequences.

It seems almost fashionable these days to find someone else to blame, but the answer, I believe, to many of the crime problems we face can be found in the home environment. I believe that, as parents, we must take more responsibility for the example we set our children and the boundaries we impose on them. It is very hard for an adult to have a serious conversation with your son or daughter about the responsible consumption of alcohol if suffering from a hangover yourself. Like many people, I enjoy a drink, but we need to break this culture of excessive consumption of alcohol, which I believe is the root cause of the violence, the road trauma and the antisocial behaviour which has become such a blight on our community.

Change is needed in our homes, as I have mentioned, but also at our sporting clubs and at community functions, where we need to demonstrate to young people that you can have a good time without getting rolling drunk. Programs that have been very successful at a local level include the Good Sports initiative, which focuses on responsible consumption of alcohol in a team sport environment, and I think they are very worthy of continued funding support by both state and federal governments. I am a huge supporter of sporting clubs, and I believe that they really do provide the opportunity to help shape our young people through active participation in organised activities such as our surf lifesaving movement, football, netball, basketball, tennis and cricket.

Where this motion talks about investing in early intervention programs to deter young people from crime, my first thought was to encourage more young people through their involvement in community life through sport and other organised activities. An old friend of mine who passed away a few years ago was a senior sergeant of police in Lakes Entrance: a fellow by the name of Adrian Lalor. He once remarked to me that he had never had any trouble from and never had to arrest any of the kids from the surf lifesaving club. Apart from the fact that the kids, having spent all day volunteering on patrol, were probably too tired to get up to any trouble on the weekend, it also reinforced the point that these young people are being taught how to be part of the community—how they fit in, how they could play a responsible role in community life and how they belong to something which is much bigger than just themselves. I think it is an interesting point in terms of the opportunities for adults in the community, through a sporting club or other community organisation, to provide that mentoring and leadership role to young people and to give them the opportunity to develop their self-esteem, develop their skills and become a responsible part of the community.

Finally, one other point I would like to make in relation to this motion is on the issue of prevention. I want to highlight again the government's failure to fund more of the closed circuit television cameras in high-risk areas, particularly in my electorate. There have been plenty of applications put forward by communities in my electorate, particularly by the Traralgon community, through the central business district there, which has a high incidence of community crime and antisocial behaviour. The funding applications have been unsuccessful at this stage. Our police do a tremendous job but they cannot be everywhere at once. Although I acknowledge nothing will replace an officer on the beat in terms of that strong visual presence, the closed circuit television cameras can assist in preventing antisocial behaviour and they can also provide strong evidence to assist in securing a conviction when crimes do occur.

I have repeatedly urged the government to provide additional funding for supporting community-based anticrime initiatives and to improve the safety on our streets. I believe that at a local community level we need to work together to encourage people to get actively involved in a range of worthwhile pursuits so they can develop a respect for others and also recognise the importance of taking responsibility for their actions. There is no doubt that the government has an important time to play in building that respect— (Time expired)

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Fraser for raising this matter and take this brief opportunity to speak to the motion. I also note and acknowledge the presence of Jess Woodall in the gallery today. Jess assisted the member for Fraser in the preparation of this motion.

The statistics within the motion speak for themselves and highlight what should be a matter of deep concern to all Australians and certainly to governments at all levels. The reality is that after years of effort we are failing to make inroads into reducing Aboriginal incarceration rates. This has been matter that has been raised time and again by Aboriginal leaders and social workers within Aboriginal communities.

The motion specifically draws comparisons between Aboriginal incarceration rates today and incarceration rates of 20 years ago. Twenty years ago was the time of the Aboriginal deaths in custody inquiry, led by the late Elliott Johnston after Commissioner Jim Muirhead had to resign in 1989. I knew Elliott Johnston, and I understand that he worked closely with fellow commissioner and Aboriginal leader Pat Dodson in writing the inquiry report.

Almost a decade after Elliott presented his report, I asked him to address a public forum on his work. I can recall that at the forum he expressed considerable disappointment that few of the report's 339 recommendations, although agreed to by governments, had been sufficiently implemented. Had they been implemented, the situation today may well have been different. A good start, therefore, may be to revisit the recommendations of that report, look at what changes have been made since it was handed down and which recommendations still await action.

I have little doubt that the recommendations made in that report 20 years ago are as relevant today as they were then. Overcoming Aboriginal disadvantage has been one of if not the most difficult social challenges faced by successive governments in Australia for decades. Some would say it has been our nation's greatest failure. Incarceration rates and deaths in custody take that disadvantage to a new level.

Prior to European settlement in Australia there were no Aboriginal people incarcerated, Aboriginals were not alcoholics or drug addicts and they were not taking their own lives. European settlement changed that and we have since failed Aboriginal people who died in custody and we have failed the families who grieve their loss. To dwell on the past, however, is only of benefit if we can learn from it.

Justice will only exist where there is equality, and equality can only come when all lives have equal worth. That is our first hurdle. We will only succeed in rebuilding the lives of Aboriginal people, who see little hope in what their future holds for them, when they are treated as equals. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating, in his now famous Redfern speech of December 1992, said:

… the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.

Admitting our own failures is often a hard thing to do. Paul Keating's speech was 19 years ago. We still have a long way to go and much to do. It has not necessarily been through lack of want, because successive governments have implemented well-intentioned policies and supported them with considerable funding.

Earlier this year in a speech I made in this place about this very issue I referred to statistics provided in a research paper prepared by Professor Chris Cunneen and Melanie Schwartz in 2008. The paper specifically deals with Aboriginal people and the criminal justice system and refers to issues such as: legal needs; language and cross-cultural issues; systemic issues such as adverse use of police discretion, juvenile justice diversionary issues, bail determination; and limited availability of sentencing options. It also covers restraints on effective service delivery arising from geographical isolation and remoteness including recruitment and retention of staff and lack of ability to provide a full range of legal services. The findings of that paper provide many of the answers that we may be looking for.

It is my view, however, that there is no single response or nationwide policy setting that will resolve the many disadvantages faced by Aboriginal people across Australia. Local solutions to local situations led by local people often need to be adopted if we are to cut through with meaningful change. And we must listen to the people who know best what they most need, that is, we must listen to the Aboriginal people themselves.

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fraser for raising this issue for discussion, and I also thank my colleagues from Aston, Gippsland and Dawson for their insightful contributions. There are two main areas of this broad and important motion that I wish to address: the disproportionate representation of Indigenous Australians in our prisons; and the unique education and rehabilitation programs implemented by not-for-profit organisations that deserve far more support and recognition than they currently receive.

The text of this motion refers to the rates of incarceration as 172 per 100,000 in the broader community rising to 2,303 per 100,000 for Indigenous Australians. That is an increase of over 1,300 per cent. You do not need a PhD from Harvard, like my learned friend from Fraser, to know that something is broken when such a disparity exists. This is an issue that should be significant to all Australians and will not be resolved in the time allocated to this motion today, but this conversation and action should never stop.

As legislators and academics debate policy responses to address these problems from an institutional perspective there are many non-government, not-for-profit groups working hard to alleviate the damage that incarceration and recidivism does to individuals and communities on the ground. One of these groups is the Australian Children's Music Foundation, founded by legendary Australian singer-songwriter Don Spencer and assisted tirelessly by program manager Vicki Fitzgibbon.

ACMF runs education programs for youth at risk in schools and disadvantaged communities. ACMF partners with 34 schools, of which 21 are 100 per cent Indigenous or have a high proportion of Indigenous students. Twelve of these schools are in remote communities. ACMF also runs an extensive juvenile justice program, currently in 17 out of 20 juvenile justice centres in Australia, with the goal to run permanent programs in all 20. ACMF has developed an enviable reputation for sustaining every program that it has initiated. This contrasts with many government programs referred to sceptically in remote Indigenous communities as 'another white Toyota'—they drive in, they drive out, never to return.

One of the remote centres where ACMF runs a program is the Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre at the Top End in the Northern Territory with detainees of both sexes aged from 10 to 18 years and with approximately 90 to 95 per cent Indigenous. The Principal of the Don Dale Education Centre, Lisa Coon, refers to the detainees as the 'Dis-Generation'. In her words:

They are typically disadvantaged, disinterested, disengaged, disillusioned, and disconnected. One of the most engaging tools the school currently possesses is the music program funded by the Australian Children's Music Foundation.

Music is a great equaliser amongst detainees, with those who may not be able to read and write in the classroom, being given the opportunity of positive expression through music. Music plays an important part in Indigenous culture and is the main venue that allows Indigenous detainees to create and perform stories about their culture in their own language.

Thus, engaging with the music program is seen as a necessary prerequisite for success in the mainstream classroom.

The ACMF juvenile justice programs are run year-round in remote and often forgotten parts of our nation with paid teachers and considerable overheads. ACMF would say that every dollar spent is worthwhile when observing the great results in some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable young people in our country. They can only make this work through the generosity of charitable donations.

Unfortunately, this government has been far more willing to perfect the art of wasting money than supporting genuine social programs. It spent $33 million last year on market research and over $20 million was spent on advertising the carbon tax, yet this government can only afford to provide ACMF with just over $15,000 per year for each juvenile justice centre.

ACMF would never complain; however, I urge this government to change their focus to assist great not-for-profit organisations like the Australian Children's Music Foundation in attacking the scourge of Indigenous incarceration. I applaud the efforts of the Australian Children's Music Foundation and all other non-government organisations, who are doing such great work in dealing with a sad reality which we seem to try so hard to avert our gaze from—that of the exceptionally disproportionate rate of Indigenous incarceration.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Fraser for this motion. It is my honour and privilege to chair the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. I tabled the Doing time–time for doing report in June 2011 in this place. That report is the result of 110 submissions; hearings across the length and breadth of the country; and 18 public hearings, including a visit to New Zealand to see what has happened in respect of the Maori population. Statistics are damning in relation to this. We have seen a 59 per cent increase in Indigenous juvenile detention over the last 10 or 15 years. The prisoner census data shows a 55 per cent increase in the number of men and a 47 per cent increase in women of Indigenous background in our jails and detention centres between 2000 and 2010. Indigenous women are 35 times more likely to be hospitalised by partner abuse than non-Indigenous women. ABS data from 2008 showed that 40 per cent of all Indigenous men had been charged with a criminal offence by the age of 25.

These figures are damning. This is a national shame, a national disgrace and a national tragedy. The standing committee made 40 recommendations to the federal government. I note the Attorney-General's recent favourable comment in a speech he made in relation to those recommendations and I look forward to his consideration and action on these matters. The report set out two high-level recommendations that seek to address the void in COAG's Closing the Gap strategy by setting justice targets and including a national partnership agreement under the safe communities building block. These things have been absent for quite some time and we need to take action in relation to them.

For too long both sides of politics have been tough on crime, but not tough enough on the causes of crime. The main thrust of our report was that prevention and early intervention are of utmost importance. The report recommended that we need to develop positive social norms, such as parenting skill, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, increasing engagement in education, initiatives to assist families—as well as young people and older people—in the transition to employment and increasing participation in sporting, cultural and recreational activities. The value of Indigenous mentors was also highlighted as role models and the report recommended that these positions be funded accordingly. We also need to enhance police awareness and cultural training.

We further recommended that the language barriers be overcome and hearing impairments be looked at for young people, particularly from Indigenous background schools. Subsequent to this report we have undertaken a report into language learning in Indigenous communities, competency in English—which is so essential for good educational outcome and vocational attainment—and an examination into the loss of Indigenous language. The impact of the loss of Indigenous language has had a very bad effect on Indigenous awareness, identity and self-esteem. At the time of white settlement there were 250 Indigenous languages across this country; now we have no more than 30 viable languages. I hope that when this committee finishes its hearings there will be some strong recommendations, because we know—as the great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said—that without one's language one is 'lost, hopelessly lonely'. We believe this will have an impact not only on our Indigenous incarceration rates, but also for better educational outcomes.

The focus on mental health is particularly important. I am pleased to see that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs will look into the issue of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. This was a recommendation from the Doing time report. There is good work being done on this issue in terms of assessment and diagnoses in a study in Fitzroy Crossing. We think that this is important and that it is a major problem that has gone undiagnosed and uncommented upon. Diagnosis, intervention and prevention are crucial for Indigenous communities, otherwise this stops good educational outcomes and good financial security for Indigenous individuals and families. We made recommendations in relation to hearing impairment and many other matters— (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.