Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am taking the opportunity today to inform the Senate about two important events I co-hosted in my hometown of Adelaide last Friday. Along with my South Australian Greens colleague the Hon. Tammy Franks MLC, I invited the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner, Dr Tom Calma, to visit Adelaide to speak with a group of interested stakeholders and MPs about the concept of justice reinvestment. As legal affairs spokesperson for the Australian Greens, one of my priorities is looking at ways to reverse the climbing rate at which we, as a nation, are putting people in prison. Justice reinvestment is a means of doing this.

On average, the Australian prison population has grown four per cent annually for the last 25 years. In my home state of South Australia, the prison population is now 40 per cent greater than it was 10 years ago. This is much faster than the rate of underlying population growth yet, if asked, people do not feel safer. Prisons are a huge drain on the public purse. Australia spent nearly $3 billion keeping people in prison in the 2009-10 financial year. But the real price of spiralling incarceration rates is the long-term impact imprisonment has on each prisoner, their family and their community. Prison is a temporary solution to criminality. Most people in prison end up leaving and then they almost always return to their communities, often in an even more dysfunctional state than when they entered. Australia's prisons have been described as a revolving door. The Australian Institute of Criminology recently reported that within two years of release 44 per cent of prisoners are either back in prison or on community correction orders.

But it is in Australia's Indigenous communities that the real costs of prison are felt most keenly. On the latest figures, Indigenous Australians are 18 times more likely to be imprisoned than their non-Indigenous counterparts. For young people aged 10 to 17 the figures are even more horrifying. Indigenous juveniles are 25 times more likely to be placed in detention than non-Indigenous youth. It is deeply troubling to me that Indigenous Australians make up only 2.5 per cent of the total population but account for 26 per cent of the adult prison population and approximately half of the total juvenile detention population. These statistics reflect a total failure of public policy in this area. They are both a symptom and a cause of extreme disadvantage. When it comes to young Indigenous people a whole generation is at risk, to the detriment of their communities and of all of us.

Australians are understandably concerned about crime and want to be safe, but increasing imprisonment does not make our communities safer. A new, ambitious criminal justice approach is needed urgently, and that is where justice reinvestment comes in. Justice reinvestment is about redirecting or reinvesting resources away from prisons into programs and strategies that are proven to prevent crime from occurring in the first place, so less crime makes communities safer and saves money. It is an old idea with a new name: the idea that prevention is better than cure. What is new is that this concept requires a new rigour, scrupulous data collection, analysis, consultation and evaluation. It is evidence based, not intuitive; and, as I will go on to show, it has been proven to work.

There are three elements to justice reinvestment: preventing crime by strengthening the communities where it tends to occur, diverting people away from jail by using other forms of punishment to avoid the university of crime effect and preventing reoffending through effective rehabilitation, parole supervision and after-jail support. It is important to say here that justice reinvestment is not about no prisons. There are obviously some crimes which are so serious they do require a jail sentence, but there are also an increasing number of offences and sentencing practices, including mandatory sentencing where judicial discretion is removed, which lead to incarceration for many people where there is no benefit to the community.

Justice reinvestment is about taking a portion of the public funds earmarked for future imprisonment costs and diverting them into programs, services and activities in local communities which have a high concentration of offenders. The evidence is that a large number of offenders come from a small number of disadvantaged communities and, by strengthening those communities, crime will be reduced.

Properly applied, justice reinvestment has four methodological steps. The first is justice mapping: using data about crimes, convictions, jail and parole to identify the places which are home to a high concentration of offenders. In the US these have been labelled 'million-dollar blocks': housing developments which give rise to so many offenders that it costs $1 million a year to keep them in prison. This data is then cross-referenced with clear indicators of disadvantage and gaps in available services, and that helps to identify the underlying causes of crime in these communities. Second, the mapping is used to develop strategies which are most likely to reduce offending and imprisonment. The costs and potential savings associated with these alternatives are quantified. Third, these future savings are then invested in the high-needs communities. Finally, there is rigorous ongoing evaluation to measure the impact of reinvestment and the functioning of the criminal justice system as a whole. This is essential to being sure that investment really works to reduce offending and reoffending.

Justice reinvestment originated in the United States, which had a 700 per cent increase in its prison population between 1970 and 2005. People were not feeling safer, but budgets were blowing out. It was the savings in prison budgets that convinced both Democrats and Republicans to embrace the concept. Texas is a great example. Not known for its warm and fuzzy approach to crime, Texas had a prison population of 150,000 in 2006 and was facing a shortfall of 17,000 beds for this year, 2012. After implementing justice reinvestment in 2006, they closed a 1,100-bed state prison in 2011 and recently recorded the lowest violent crime rate in 30 years, saving $1 billion. Now 16 US states have taken up or are seriously investigating justice reinvestment. In June last year both Ohio and North Carolina introduced justice reinvestment legislation with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Over the last few years the concept has been gaining momentum in Australia, and various groups have been advocating for its implementation in Western Australia, the ACT, New South Wales and Victoria. It is a policy for all communities where crime rates are high. It is no surprise that these are going to be the most disadvantaged communities; and, sadly, it is no surprise that many of these most disadvantaged communities are Indigenous communities. We invited Dr Calma to Adelaide to kick-start a discussion about implementing justice reinvestment in SA, particularly as a way to reduce Aboriginal overrepresentation in the South Australian criminal justice system. I was gratified by the cross-party support for the briefing for South Australian MPs, which was co-hosted with my South Australian Greens colleague Tammy Franks MLC, the Attorney-General, John Rau, and the shadow Attorney-General, Stephen Wade. If we are to get beyond cynical tough-on-crime rhetoric to deal with these issues then long-term, evidence based, multipartisan policy will be essential.

Over 40 people attended the roundtable, including members of the legal profession, victim and support services, academics, government representatives from correctional services and Families SA, and Aboriginal elders. A key theme was the utmost importance of making sure Aboriginal voices are heard in developing and implementing services and programs on the ground and ensuring that these are culturally appropriate and community driven. The roundtable agreed to establish a working group to advance the principles of justice reinvestment in South Australia. It is a good first step in the right direction on a very long road.

Criminal justice is traditionally seen as a state and territory responsibility, but there is certainly a role for the Commonwealth government. As with Indigenous health, education and employment via Closing the Gap, Commonwealth leadership is vital when it comes to criminal justice outcomes. As a first step I will be calling upon COAG to adopt a Closing the Gap target for reducing Indigenous imprisonment rates. This must be supported by a well-funded justice reinvestment framework. The time has come to embrace smart, targeted, evidence based solutions to reduce imprisonment rates and improve outcomes for disadvantaged communities. A serious and long-term commitment to social justice for our most disadvantaged communities is the surest way to empty our jails and, paradoxically, to make our communities safer.