Law and order? Never mind the cost…

As WA prepares to vote, electors have to decide which of the two major parties involved in a ‘Law and Order’ auction should get their vote. “Neither of them” is the answer, if cost-effective spending on crime is the determinant. Here’s an analysis of some of the wackier ideas…

Law and order? Never mind the cost…

WA goes to the polls on March 9. Both the ruling Liberal and challenging Labor parties are engaged in a law and order ‘auction’, trying to sound as if they are tougher on crime. As usual, they are saying stupid things.

All citizens – including us ‘do-gooders’ in Civil Liberties Australia – want criminals in jail. We, like you, want it to be the ‘right’ criminals, for the worst offences, particularly, and properly convicted, serving the jail terms the community believes are appropriate.

Politicians and commentators put forward the ideas below in a recent article: here’s a quick analysis of how effective they might be:

Doubling sentences: Doesn’t work. If you think a criminal makes a calculated decision before breaking into a house and stealing, or raping someone, you’ve got rocks in your head. Criminals have no sense of what ‘punishment’ they might receive, ‘if’ they get caught. People committing crimes don’t for one second think they will get caught, so the length of potential sentence is no deterrent whatsoever.

Mandatory sentences: Produces ridiculous outcomes in some cases. Only magistrates and judges know the full story – they are paid (big money) to sit in court and listen to all of the evidence, and to use their judgement to sentence convicted criminals. If you don’t like the sentences, campaign for a particular judge to be ‘retired’ or ‘moved sideways’, if you find one that demonstrably isn’t competent. Attack the problem if sentencing is out of kilter with what the community expects. (If it is a problem, which it probably isn’t, because most research on sentencing says judges get it overwhelmingly right).

Lock ‘em up and throw away the key. Self-penalising. Let’s say the offender’s 20, and we lock him up for 50 years. Currently, the cost of jail is about $110,000 per person per year, on average. So, you want taxpayers, including you, to pay about $5.5 million for each    of these criminals locked up/key thrown away? (That’s a conservative estimate, because the cost will rise over time). Who pays? Not the criminal, you the taxpayer. It’s actually in your interest that sentences are as short as possible, not longer. It’s in your interest that the criminal is rehabilitated…but that’s a dirty word in prisons. Supposed to be THE reason for prison, but it doesn’t happen. How about we all demand that politicians try to make rehabilitation happen, to better protect us in future? After all, if prisons worked, there’d be less crime over time. Instead, prisons are training grounds for more crime.

Well, perhaps not that long, just 10 years extra: Mmm, so that will only cost you an extra $1.1 million. You’ll be paying board and lodging for that criminal for an extra 10 years. How about coming up with an idea that makes criminals work to pay you back, rather than you having to ‘pay’ them? What about criminals doing hazard reduction bushfire work? Or laying out shark netting? Or being available for (reasonable cost) hire to the community? Or encouraged to do voluntary work for sentence remission?

Longer sentences? Counter-productive, unless you clear the jails of the people who shouldn’t be there, because there’s not enough room in the existing jails, and more jails would have to be built (you pay, again). Who to get rid of? Most Aboriginal juveniles jailed for petty offences, and people locked up for ‘victimless’ crimes like growing and smoking their own pot. Remember, each of these people in jail are costing you more than $200 a day. Clear the jails of those who don’t need to be there, because they are not violent, then you can jail more of those people who should be there, because they are violent.  Build different types of restraining places, that are not jails, for Aboriginal kids who need schooling and training more than jailing.

Corporal punishmen (eg,the cane): Silly idea, and contrary to today’s human rights standards worldwide, but let’s suppose we do it. What happens then? Criminal is given, say, cuts of the rattan cane, hurts like buggery for 2-3 days. Criminal is back out in the community earlier (because they have been caned), pain forgotten a week later, and ready to offend again. Only ‘positive’ outcome likely is that the criminal can commit the same crime quicker than if he served an appropriate jail sentence. Who wins? You don’t.

Mandatory death penalty: Utterly illogical (and proven by research to be no deterrent). So, you want the state – that’s you – to kill a person. Why? Because the person killed someone…like you are about to do. Explain how that works, again? Repeating, research shows the death penalty does not act as a deterrent (that is, it doesn’t stop other people doing whatever it is you – the state – are killing a particular person for)*. Also, the death penalty is against federal law.

Extra cops? Why? The cops are not catching the ‘right’ criminals now. That’s exactly what you’re complaining about!  More cops won’t catch more burglars and rapists, unless re-directed and managed differently. They’ll simply go on catching more people for driving offences (like moving the mobile phone while driving so it’s not poking into your backside), or smoking pot, or other ‘offences’ that don’t get up people’s nose as much as burglaries/home invasions and rapes. There’s enough police, they’re just concentrating on the ‘wrong’ issues, or so politicians and commentators suggest. Demand the Police Minister orders the police to concentrate on catching burglars and home invaders, particularly rapists, for six months. Then assess the results: if the new concentration succeeds, it can become permanent. Make the Police Minister, and the Police Commissioner, allocate the extensive resources they already have in the manner you, the citizen, want them allocated.

Note: There are 5500 police and another 2000-odd civvies in the WA Police. That’s enough to have about 1500-2000 on the streets of Perth most days (and, more importantly, nights). Do you see them on the streets? Do you see them in your suburb? Do you see them at night? Why not? Police on the beat are a deterrent that works, research shows. Demand your politicians deliver the type of police service you want. Speak up – tell the police and the pollies what you want police to concentrate on. Thanks to the efforts of civil liberties people over many decades, you have freedom of speech (well, some anyway…the federal government’s now trying to restrict it, again).

Get rid of ‘the scum’ for good: Unfortunately, ‘the scum’ are your brothers, sisters, friends, workmates, etc…or relatives thereof. It’s an unpopular thought, but we actually have some moral responsibility as a state to look after them. How much? Not sure, what do you think? Would you like to exile them to Tasmania maybe (Port Arthur), or the Eastern States (Norfolk Island used to be popular, or that place in Sydney Harbour, Pinchgut)? Will they always be ‘scum’, or will they grow out of it? How do we hasten their growing up? Could we use them as labour, in work camps, to build roads in the north?

‘I will take the law into my own hands’: Brilliant! That turns you into the criminal. When you’re convicted, you get to stay in that luxurious (see Note below) prison you’re complaining about, having $200-plus a day spent on you. It is a motel and a holiday home, as you say, so you’ll enjoy your stay. Probably for about 15-30 years. No ‘soft’ judge for you, you’ll get the one and only ‘hard’ judge in WA. So, while you’ve been the big man, and bashed someone, or killed them, it’s your family and children who’ll do the real suffering. But you’re the smart one, you showed ‘em. Tell it to the kids, through the grill. By the time you get out, they’ll be married with kids of their own.

‘Allow us to have guns to defend ourselves’: Yeh, right. Works so well in America, as illustrated by Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut (32 dead), Columbine High School in Colorado (13 dead), Virginia Tech in Virginia (32 dead) and dozens of other massacres. But massacres are actually not the biggest problem, guns are: 1,171,177 Americans have been killed at war since the USA was born. Conversely, the total number of gun-related deaths in America since 1968 is 1,384,171. Dusten Carlson questions whether it is more dangerous to live in America than it is to go to war for America. We’d rather not have to ask that question in Australia.  http://tiny.cc/ham9rw

How about some workable solutions? Thoughtless politicians scream “more law and order” just before an election every few years, but if they ever deliver, they don’t have to pay: you do. How about the politicians actually promise to try some new ideas and methods like we’ve suggested above. Here’s a challenge: in commenting on this article, whatever you say, at least propose one new solution or part-solution…instead of just repeating the silly calls of even sillier politicians from both sides of parliament who are bereft of ideas, and want to spend millions upon millions more of your money on their promises, which won’t work because they never have before.

* Re the death penalty: There’s also the little matter of wrongful conviction, therefore killing the wrong person. WA, of all states, should be aware of how many times the police and legal system have got it wrong over the past 20-30 years by convicting the wrong man. Probably it’s only about 1 in 200 that’s wrong, an innocent man killed if you impose the death penalty..but which 1 is the one?

ENDS

 

What is prison really like?

NOTE:  Alexis Keogh wrote this in 2010. It’s background to the life of her father, Henry, locked up in a South Australian prison now for 17 years for a murder that – most fair-minded observers believe – not only did he not commit, but that nobody committed: there was no murder. The SA Govt is about to change the law to allow an appeal which may just free Henry Keogh sometime later in 2013.

Incarceration is much, much more that just losing your freedom or being confined to an institution:

• It’s being handcuffed, herded around like cattle and abused
• It’s countless indignities to yourself and worse, your family.
• Family contact is mostly limited to a hug and a kiss at the start of a 45 minute visit and another when someone yells ‘Time’s up!”
• Every phone call is monitored and recorded
• Every personal letter is opened and inspected.
• It’s being locked in a cell 2.5m x 3.5m for up to seventeen and a half (or more) hours a day
• It’s emptying your bowels 3 feet from your cellmate or in front of a camera.
• It’s strip searches at any time, several times a day.
• Its cell searches at any time, with ad-hoc confiscations a way of life.
• It’s non-smokers being celled up with smokers and being told “too bad, just deal with it”
• It’s inconsistent and hypocritical enforcement of ‘the rules’.
• It’s having even the most minor infractions being punished arbitrarily & without proper process.
• Its wanting to scream at the many injustices that no one else seems to care about.
• It’s wanting to weep for everything you’ve lost and everything you have to endure.
• It’s learning contempt, distrust and how to hate, which try to eat away at your humanity
• And it’s wanting to curl into a ball and give up.

That’s how the system operates. It crushes and consumes you by outlasting you. Once the system swallows you up, time is on their side. You have no voice, no power, and no value. You’re invisible.

Bill Rowlings is CEO of Civil Liberties Australia. More WA members welcome: http://www.cla.asn.au