Crowded jails show need for review of Victoria's 'war on crime'
Law and order populism by Victorian governments of both hues – the endless battle over who is ‘‘toughest on crime’’ – has had unintended consequences for the state’s overflowing prison system. This is the inescapable conclusion of an investigation by The Age’s Royce Millar and Chris Vedelago into the surging prisoner numbers that are the result of tightening by lawmakers of parole, sentencing and bail regulations.
It is encouraging that new Corrections Minister Ben Carroll appears open to reviewing the Corrections Act, with a view to emphasising prisoner rehabilitation. The need is evident. Governments have reacted to understandable public outrage over some heinous crimes in recent years by taking hasty, expedient measures, rather than a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to law and order. In the face of public pressure, and an impending state election last year, a government grab for judicial power was not surprising. And prison policy is a difficult and vexed issue.
But the prison population is exploding – with women, particularly Indigenous women, accounting for disproportionate surges – primarily because governments have shackled the system, reducing judges’ expert discretion through mandatory sentencing and inflexible bail rules.
The number of people in Victorian prisons has doubled over the past decade to more than 8100. Projections released exclusively to The Age show the growth will continue into the foreseeable future, with prisoner numbers expected to soar to 11,130 within four years.
The annual cost to taxpayers has tripled to $1.6 billion, and a record $1.8billion is included in the state budget to build more prisons.
The tendency of lawmakers to seek to deal with horrific crimes such as those committed by Adrian Bayley and James Gargasoulas by toughening sentencing, parole and bail is understandable. But being tough is overshadowing the government’s duty to make enlightened laws. Throwing marginal cases in jail merely clogs the system and puts otherwise unthreatening people into an environment where they learn crime. The state’s ‘‘war on crime’’ has not helped; recidivism has been increased by widespread incarceration.
As The Age has revealed in recent days, the biggest single driver to our surging prisoner numbers is the toughening of the bail laws.
The issues are emotional and complex. There is valid community anger about a man who rapes and murders a woman while he is on parole or a man who commits mass murder while on bail. In seeking to respond to rage, governments have created a net that is catching and automatically incarcerating people who should not be behind bars. A measured, bipartisan review of the impact of the bail changes is now needed and the laws may require tweaking.
The community and its lawmakers need to ponder what balance, ethically and financially, should be struck in removing the liberties of a significant number of people in a bid to prevent human error and misjudgment. We need to debate how much money we are prepared to spend on prisons instead of on schools, hospitals and rehabilitation of lawbreakers who do not pose a material threat.
These are not easy discussions. They involve the inherent tension between law and liberty. They are necessary because, at the moment, it is clear that people who pose no risk to the community are jammed in overcrowded remand cells because courts are struggling to manage the increased caseload. They are necessary because our democracy depends on a healthy separation of power between executive government, parliaments and the judiciary. They are necessary because attempting to prevent extremely rare injustice cannot justify creating systemic injustice.