Letter to Executive Producers dated 23 May 2018    2nd Letter to Executive Producers dated 5 June 2018

The Australian Parliament should revert to the punishment practices of our neo-colonial days, namely execution and floggings, because the current punishment/deterrent by prison incarceration has proven ineffectual, costly and fraught with Social Costs.  Australian Parliaments should re-adopt the Corporal and Capital punishment sentences that were assigned by the state Criminal Courts one hundred years ago - the year The Great War ended  - 1918 for some criminal behaviour

Reduce Australia’s pro-rata Criminal Justice System annual funding costs and new occupant numbers by –

·        3% in one year - AUD$78 million;

·        5% in three years - AUD$130 million; and

·        9% in 10 years - AUD$234 million,

by adopting some of the ‘crime deterrent practices’ that have applied to over 97% of all Homo sapiens that have ever breathed air on terra firma

Government empirical data establishes that prison does not effectively discourage re-offending/re-entering

In the last 70 years circa in the UK, Canada and Australia, the pendulum has swung too far to the left, thereby forgoing cost-effective ‘crime deterrent punishments’ that previously kept citizens out of the ‘prisoner education revolving turnstile’

Our governments are obligated to expend the Public Purse cost-effectively for the benefit of taxpayers.  Yet the 'punishment' and 'deterrent' capacity of Australia's prison incarceration system is -

*        about 20% as effective as Corporal and Capital punishment; and

*        over ten times more costly

Safeguard the QOL of tens of thousands of vulnerable, predominately young Australians, by deterring them from approaching that ‘revolving turnstile’ by re-introducing 'punishment deterrents' that -

*        have served over 97% of all Homo sapiens; and

*        were infinitely more effective than the current ‘crime education revolving turnstile’

1.         Prelude 

Recidivism among prisoners in Australian gaols can be measured by the rate at which released prisoners return to prison.  In Australia overall, 44.8% of prisoners released during 2014-15 returned to prison within two years (to 2016-17). Feb 1, 2018

Call for a complete rethink as prison population, recidivism explode  -  SMH - Rachel Olding  -  Feb 2016 includes:

“Despite crime rates falling sharply since 2001, the (Aust.) prison population has increased, largely due to more people –

·         being refused bail,

·         receiving prison terms for minor crimes; and

·         staying in for longer.

NSW's recidivism rate is the worst of any state. About 48 per cent of inmates leaving prison will be back within two years, up nearly 1 percentage point for every financial year since 2011.  Only the NT has a worse record.”

Australia's Criminal Justice Costs: An International Comparison - April 2017 prepared by Andrew Bushnell, Institute of Public Affairs reports:

A.       Australia spends an estimated $16 billion a year on our criminal justice system (police services, courts and correctional services/prisons).

B.       There are now 36,000 inmates in Australia's prisons, up 39 per cent from a decade ago - the prison system costs the Australian taxpayer $4 billion annually.

C.       Australia's $4 billion annual prison system has created a "class of persistent criminals":

   (i)         58 percent of prisoners have been imprisoned before (stable over the past 10 years)

   (ii)        44.6 percent of prisoners released during 2013-14 returned to prison within two years (up from 39.5 percent five years ago)

   (iii)       52.6 percent of prisoners released during 2013-14 returned to corrective services within two years

Patently and alarmingly, the Australian criminal justice system in modern times –

A)        does not punish the convicted criminal demonstrably to deter others from similarly entering the plagued and financially unsustainable criminal justice system (Section 5 below) due to higher priority alternative public expenditures; and

B)        is a ‘revolving turnstile’ that once having entered it, flips prisoners back in again and again, because –

  *          prison is a meeting place for criminals;

  *          prison is not a vehicle for acquiring social inclusion skills to gain employment post-prison and re-habilitate back into society; and

  *          prison life offers three meals a day and a warm bed at night, unlike most gaols 100 years ago, i.e. the former Dubbo Gaol where Winter nights were cold and blankets few.

2.       A few journalists in the UK have espoused the merits of re-introducing hanging of vicious murderers which would discourage others from murdering

 Hang it!  Here we go again  - Peter Hitchens  29 April 2013

“I favour hanging because of its extreme swiftness when efficiently carried out, combined with its huge moral force.  There are many arguments for the death penalty beginning with the placing a special value on human life, moving on to deterrence.  Beneath all those arguments lies a religious question (this is the case with most major issues of our time).

If man has no soul, and this is the only life we have, and there is no eternity, nor any divine justice, then the only arguments for the death penalty are utilitarian ones. In an age of unbelief, I tend to concentrate on the utilitarian ones. But even those lead me to the view that the act of execution, while not being actively cruel or involving mental or physical torture, should be frightening and violent, rather than pseudo-medical.  I would be cowardly if I did not say this. I do not enjoy saying it, or thinking it. But those who wish to have anything to do with standing between the populace and evil must sometimes face directly the unpleasant duties that may fall on them. The main reason for the abolition of the death penalty is the squeamishness of politicians, who enjoy office but do not like all the duties which power loads on to their (often rather narrow) shoulders.  Far easier to them to leave the matter to some trembling constable with a gun in a dark street, who can be disavowed if it all goes wrong later.  

The use of medical-seeming methods also tends to support the idea that crime is a disease rather than a willful act of conscious evil.  I formed this view when I witnessed an execution by lethal injection.”

“Why bringing back hanging is the right thing to do” - Stephen Pollard, - Sat, Jun 25, 2011

             “A poll in the U.K. in September 2010 found that 51 per cent supported reinstating the death penalty for murder, compared with 37 per cent who oppose it.”

Why Do People Get So Worked Up About the Death Penalty? - Peter Hitchens  17 Aug 2015

50 years after the last execution in Britain, people still tend to support the reintroduction of the death penalty, by 45-39% - 2014

Mr B. Jones, M.P., Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (H of R)  23 Nov 1978, 3293:

“Punishment is a cherished part of the Australian way of life. It is a concept that Australians understand and warm to. The last remnant of the puritan ethic is the sense that everyone who goes to prison deserves to be there and that conditions ought to be tough, otherwise offenders will prefer the security and comfort of prison to the hazards of life outside .... Australia began as a convict settlement and penology was its primary industry for 50 years. Our penal birthstains and convict ancestry has not—the ‘mateship’ legend to the contrary—given much sympathy for prisoners. They are not seen as victims of society, but as outlaws, people who have declared war on society.[49]

Avery Dulles, in his book "Catholicism and Capital Punishment, First Things" 2001 notes:

 "….. executions, especially where they are painful, humiliating, and public, may create a sense of horror that would prevent others from being tempted to commit similar crimes”

The current method of execution in Texas USA of a vicious murderer who displayed no compassion for his/her victim/s, evidences political correctness leaning too far to the left.  Rather than being hung by the neck with several witnesses present, and public announcement of it, the convicted murderer is discretely injected with a poison to ensure a painless death; a concession often not granted to his/her victim/s.   

Question: 

Does the current quiet sanctuary afforded at execution in Texas deter other potential transgressors to the same degree that the supporters of Jesus of Nazareth witnessed in the painful lead-up to Jesus’ ultimate death on public display on a wooden cross that Jesus had to drag from town centre wearing a crown of thorns whilst being whipped?   

Answer: 

A painless injection in a quiet and private preserve does not instil the same deterrent effect deployed 2,000 years' ago to discourage similar transgressions. 

3.       Over 97% of the 109 billion Homo sapiens ever born are UN-likely to be wrong about the deterrent effect of swift and sometimes brutal punishment, consistent with a vicious murderer’s ‘modus operandi’

An estimated 109 billion Homo sapiens have entered terra firma initially congregating in East Africa approx. 125,000 years ago and then 75,000 years ago or thereabouts starting to populate the planet. 

Over 97% of those 109b have lived under a retribution system referred to (in the Western world) as Capital and Corporal punishment.  The majority of the current 7.6b human population today live under Capital and Corporal punishment edicts.  Rulers in countries such as China, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Arab States, North Korea ‘et al’ opine that incarceration is costly and an ineffective deterrent to further behavioural transgressions.  Those countries seek to expend their Public Purse more so on health and educating citizens that will be productive taxpayers and do not take the ‘easy option’ by not similarly punishing criminal offenders. 

Incarceration as an alternative to Corporal Punishment or Capital Punishment has been used by some Western Countries only during the –

·         last scintilla of the 125,000 years that Homo sapiens has occupied ‘terra firma’ ; and

·         only the final speck of the 65,000 years circa that Homo sapiens advanced beyond East Africa.

Western countries such as the USA and Australia should learn from South East Asian and Middle Eastern Countries.  China pumps a bullet in the side of the convicted murderer’s cranium and charges the family for the bullet.  There is no protracted and costly appeal system.

Confining a vicious murdered to a steel cage until he dies at the taxpayers’ expense is not cost effective expenditure of the Public Purse when that purse is already in deficit, and higher priorities exist (health and education) that will achieve more taxpayers and higher productivity from some of them.  That is the priority in China, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam ‘et al’. 

The same rationale applies for less serious crimes where flogging is a greater deterrent than spending time at Her Majesties Expense which is often a breeding ground for learning more about crime from other criminals and the "return rate" is almost 50%, perhaps because three meals a day and a warm bed is appealing to some. 

Islam practices Sharia law where punishment is often carried out on a Friday, either executions or floggings.  The deterrent effect upon those required to witness the application of punishment is cogent. 

Reportedly, 2,000 years ago a revolutionary/radical/outspoken named Jesus of Nazareth challenged/criticised the behaviour/ethics of the local ruling Jewish government. 

Jewish locals muttered:   

“This Jesus guy is right.  He is on the money. We are getting screwed over by the –

 (i)       Jewish tax collectors appointed by the Romans;

 (ii)      Jewish money lenders; and

 (iii)     Jewish false prophets in the holy temple that tell us to give them my money and they will get me into the next life.”

Jesus and his vocal followers represented a threat to the local Jewish rulers who ‘took Jesus out’ in a brutal and public execution which was the medium of the era to deliver the patent message to other potential transgressors  “Don’t mess with us”.

As was the case 2,000 years ago, punishment today has to incorporate a message, “Don’t mess with us, because the price that you will pay will be painful”.  Why is that message necessary?  To discourage prospective criminals from entering the Revolving Turnstile because the prison system  includes material failings, not limited to cost on the Public Purse, crime education and proliferation of diseases.

The last execution (by hanging) in Australia was Ronald Ryan in 1967.  Australia’s recent partiality for incarceration lacks the patent message:  “Don’t mess with us”.  Whereupon crime is rife, too often exacerbated by crystal meth 'et al', and punishment is not cost-effective.  Prisons are often a breeding ground for further transgressions.

NB:    Likely, the brutal crucifixion of a radical known as Jesus of Nazareth was chronicled in the New Testament by spin-doctors “that did not know him from a bar of soap” and born hundreds of years after his death. Some were canonised as Saints for the benefits to the church of their creative, imaginative ‘spin’.  Jesus’ name and his courage remained in folklore for two hundred years because only a handful knew how to write and fewer had the primitive tool to inscribe a few words.  Bic biros and note pads were over 1,900 years away.  Jesus’ character was ultimately stolen in the pursuit of ‘crowd control’ and ‘power/authority enhancement’ by the early Catholic Church. (Crowd control was probably the greatest benefit of Christianity).  Jesus did not have 12 peaceful apostles, but rather a larger following of disgruntled peasants.  Nobody knows the names of his parents.  There were no Three Wise Men with wisdom to anticipate and herald his birth.  Eve did not eat a forbidden apple and give humans 'original sin'.

4.       Capital Punishment and Corporal Punishment practiced in Australia until the mid-20th Century was swift, frightening and often painful

Capital punishment in Australia was usually by hanging, dating back before the First Fleet until Ronald Ryan was the last convicted murderer hung in Victoria in 1967:

“Capital punishment had been part of the legal system of Australia since British settlement and during the 19th century, crimes that could carry a death sentence included burglary, sheep stealing, forgery, sexual assaults, murder and manslaughter, and there is one reported case of someone being executed for "being illegally at large".  During the 19th century, these crimes saw about 80 people hanged each year throughout Australia”.

Below is an extract from No. 3  'Capital punishment' produced by the AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF CRIMINOLOGY:

"Public Opinion Polls

Although Australia has abandoned capital punishment, it does not follow that it could never be reintroduced.  Nor does it mean that it cannot be imposed on Australians travelling overseas, as illustrated by the double execution of Barlow and Chambers who were hanged in Malaysia on 7 July 1986 for drug trafficking.

Whenever a particularly vicious crime is committed, members of the public, police, politicians and the press ‘reopen’ the debate on the death penalty.

For example, as recently as October (1986) the 30 member council of the Police Federation of Australia voted unanimously to press State and Federal Governments to hold a referendum upon the reintroduction of capital punishment. The issue of capital punishment is most often raised in respect of sex-murder cases, acts of wanton terrorism, or the killing of police or prison officers.

Over recent years, a number of opinion polls have been carried out to determine the public's attitude to capital punishment. Results vary because of differences in the wording of the questions, and in the type and timing of the surveys. A phone-in poll conducted in January 1986 by a Sydney TV station shortly after a particularly gruesome sex-murder received over 48 000 calls. On this occasion 95 per cent of the respondents were in favour of the reintroduction of capital punishment.

More reliable surveys, such as those run by Australian Public Opinion Polls or Morgan Gallup Polls, have elicited pro-capital punishment results ranging from 70 per cent (in response to a question which specifically related to crimes such as child murder, rape-murder or gang war murder) 7 to only 43 per cent (where an almost equal percentage voted for life imprisonment when asked to decide the appropriate penalty for murder. See Table 3).8"

Corporal punishment in Australia was usually by whipping (teenagers) or flogging (adults) until the mid 20th Century. 

          "Flogging with the cat for adult male offenders, and birching and parental caning for boys, were still in use in South Australia in the 1950s, as may be seen in several historical news items. The clearest picture of what the "parental caning" involved comes in this May 1956 illustrated news item, where it is interesting to note that one youth so caned was aged 17, despite the supposed upper limit of 14 (according to Cadogan)."

A Flogging at the Woolloomooloo police station in 1883 -  Australian Town and Country Journal, Sydney, 22 Sept 1883, p.17:

"The first sentence of corporal punishment under the new Criminal Law Act was carried out at the Woolloomooloo police station last Tuesday. There were present the inspectors of police and other officers of the force, also Dr. Egan, who was in attendance professionally as medical officer on the occasion. Frederick Mildwater, the prisoner, is a man about 30 years of age, and is said to have a wife and children. He is about the medium height, and well built, but not stout or particularly muscular. At noon precisely he, being stripped to the waist, was brought into the yard, where the ominous-looking triangle structure stood ready to receive him. He looked ashy pale, but his demeanour was determined, and he walked firmly up to the place, where he was tied up in the usual way. Then the lash was laid on vigorously. After about six strokes of the cat had been administered, the appearances of punishment began to show up painfully, and as the seventh stroke was laid on the unfortunate man spoke, or rather moaned out the words, "Oh, don't. Oh, don't." After this he made no complaint, and scarcely uttered a sound, but it was evident that he suffered terribly. Long before the allotted number of lashes had been given the prisoner's back was ridged with bruises, black and blue, with here and there a dark red stain that told of terrible irritation. And finally, when the active punishment was over (for the actual suffering in such cases must continue for a weary time) the man's back was almost raw, and presented a truly sickening spectacle. Mildwater appeared faint and ill, when he was cut down; but he was able to walk away, and did so. He was afterwards removed to Darlinghurst, where he has to do a term of six months' imprisonment, with hard labour."

Contesting corporal punishment: Abolitionism, transportation and the British imperial project - University of Sydney - Oct 2008

 

          "The cat-of-nine-tails is one of the major icons of Australia’s convict past. From readers of Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore to visitors to the (now closed) theme park, Old Sydney Town, Australian audiences have been captivated by the spectacle of flogging................ Corporal punishment of convicts was frequent in the early years of white settlement, but was increasingly curtailed, in theory if not in practice, from the 1820s.  Floggings of several hundred lashes were commonly reported in the first two decades of settlement whereas, by 1832, the maximum sentence awardable in New South Wales was 100 lashes."

 

 

The Writer attended Catholic schools from 1955 to 1969 during an era when ‘spare the rod, and spoil the child’ was common parlance.  He, and the vast majority of his classmates, were whipped with a leather strap by school teachers on the hand or buttock for indisgressions. From about 4 years old until about 8 years old if he, or his brothers, transgressed in the family home, his father applied the wrong end of the feather duster to the wrongdoer’s open palm a couple of times.  The Writer managed to survive and learn what was right and wrong in his household and at his schools where school teachers were respected and occasionally admired. Corporal punishment didn’t negatively affect the Writer demonstrably.

Vicious juveniles 'should be caned' - The News, Adelaide, 18 May 1956.

AUSTRALIA:  Domestic Corporal Punishment chronicles the abolition of Corporal Punishment in schools, starting in the state school system.

4(a)    Early capital punishment globally

  "Decimation (Latin: decimatio; decem = "ten") was a form of military discipline used by senior commanders in the Roman Army to punish units or large groups guilty of capital offences, such as mutiny or desertion in battle.  Decimation was applied for approx. 500 years leading up to 20AD. The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth".  A cohort (roughly 480 soldiers) selected for punishment by decimation was divided into groups of ten. Each group drew lots, and the soldier on whom the lot fell was executed by his nine comrades by stoning or clubbing.  As the punishment fell by lot, all soldiers in a group sentenced to decimation were potentially liable for execution, regardless of individual degrees of fault, rank, or distinction.

  The earliest documented decimation occurred in 471 BC. during the Roman Republic's early wars.  In an incident where his army had been scattered, consul Appius Claudius Sabinus Regillensis had the culprits punished for desertion: centurions, standard-bearers and soldiers who had cast away their weapons were individually scourged and beheaded, while of the remainder, one in ten were chosen by lot and executed.  The practice was revived by Marcus Licinius Crassus in 71 BC during the Third Servile War against Spartacus, and some historical sources attribute part of Crassus' success to it.  The number of men killed through decimation is not known, but it varies between 1,000 (used on 10,000 men), or a cohort of around 480-500 men, meaning that 48-50 were killed."

Mongolian woman condemned to die of starvation on public display.

5.       Australian Parliamentary Report dated 2013 that examined the economic and social costs of imprisonment concluded that the current justice system with rising economic costs, as well as acute social costs (for individuals, families and communities) is unsustainable.   Similar findings in England and Wales 10 years earlier

Chapter 3 'The economic and social costs of imprisonment' and  Chapter 4 'The over-representation of disadvantaged groups within Australian prisons' part of an Australian Parliamentary Report dated 2013:

A.     Chronicle the high monetary and social costs, as well as the abnormally high re-offending rates following prison incarceration.  Experiencing life in gaol does not offer the same deterrent effect that Capital and Corporal punishment does. 

B.    Evidenced that incarceration as a form of punishment is highly cost-ineffective and a breeding/training ground for more complex crimes, sometimes allied with newfound accomplices, because inmates are in regular contact with other adroit convicted law breakers.

“3.24      Submitters commented on the health impacts of imprisonment. The increase in prison populations has caused overcrowding in prisons, which impacts on prisoner health. Drug use and related health issues are a concern with a higher rate of hepatitis C and HIV manifesting in prison populations due to needle sharing. The overall prevalence of hepatitis is estimated to be between 23 and 47 per cent for male prisoners and between 50 and 70 per cent for female prisoners.  As many prisoners move in and out of the corrections system quickly, these infections pose a risk to both the inmate and public health.  Prisoners with histories of substance abuse are also at a higher risk of death once released, particularly death from drug overdose.[27]

3.25      The prison population is also at risk in relation to mental health.  There is a high rate of mental health illness in the justice system with 31 per cent of imprisoned individuals reporting they had been told by a health care professional that they had had a mental health disorder in their lifetime, 'a rate 2.5 times higher than the general population'.[28]

   Conclusion 

   3.31    The increase in prisoner numbers is putting financial strain on the Australian justice system, which is quickly becoming unsustainable. Released prisoners are finding it difficult to find work and are facing multiple barriers to reintegrating with society. In addition, the removal of an individual from a community or family can have long lasting effects, as well as increasing financial burden. Due to the overcrowding of prisons, prisoner health is deteriorating and those health issues are being transferred to society with the release of prisoners. Governments need to address the long term economic and social costs of imprisonment to prevent further development of intergenerational offending, and occurrences of recidivism.

C.    Chapter 2 - The drivers behind the growth in the Australian imprisonment rate"

 

             Conclusion

  2.67      It is acknowledged that the Australian imprisonment rate has been growing and that prison populations have reached an unacceptable level. Drivers behind the increase in imprisonment rates include changes in the justice system and  the introduction of more punitive measures as a result of 'tough on crime' policies. In addition, the underlying social and economic determinants of crime compound systemic changes. To halt the increasing incarceration rate in Australia, all drivers of crime must be addressed.

D.   "Drug use and initiation in prison: Results from a national prison survey in England and Wales" - 2003 reported:

"More than 60% of the heroin users and cannabis users reported that they had used these drugs in prison compared with less than a quarter of the life-time cocaine users.  More than a quarter of the heroin users reported that they had initiated use of this drug in prison.  The extent of an individual's experience of prison was related more consistently to heroin and/or cocaine use in and out of prison than other personal background, social history or psychiatric variables assessed. The findings indicate that prisons are a high-risk environment for heroin and other drug initiation and use."

 6.       A few recent Australian vicious murderers that should have been brutally and painfully executed, so as to -

           *        respect and measure their victims' pain, suffering and loss of life; and

           *        discourage other similar murderers

The Ivan Milat, Backpacker Murders and the Martin Bryant, Port Arthur massacre evidenced 42 innocent people slaughtered.  Milat and Bryant were not required to pay for their monstrous crimes with their lives when judges ruled that they could never be released into mainstream society because of the risk of re-killing.  Unlike the earlier history of Australian criminal courts, Milat and Bryant were not executed because our federal Parliament considers execution barbaric, no matter what the crime/s and the brutal pain that they inflicted.   

Martin Bryant shot 35 people to death in Port Arthur Tasmania in 1996.  He has been sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in a maximum security steel cage at the taxpayers’ expense of AUD$175,000 pa circa $150,000 pa (Administrative Costs) and $25,000 pa (Capex Costs). He took the lives of 35 innocent Australians, yet was not required to pay for taking those lives by foregoing his life.

Between 1989 and 1993, Ivan Milat viciously and sadistically murdered seven young backpackers, aged 19 to 22, in the Belanglo State Forest, 15 kilometres from Berrima NSW.  Five of the victims were foreign backpackers visiting Australia (three German, two British).  Two were Australian travellers from Melbourne.  Ivan Milat is Never To Be Released. 

The Australian taxpayer was sentenced to the order of $175,000 per inmate annually for maximum security confinement, because each was sentenced to occupy a steel cage at the taxpayer’s expense until each dies. Can any politician articulate the logic of that injustice to the victims and to taxpayers?

In 2012, Milat's great-nephew, Matthew Milat, and his friend, Cohen Klein, (both aged 19 at the time of their sentencing) were sentenced to 43 years and 32 years in prison, respectively, for murdering David Auchterlonie on his 17th birthday with an axe at the Belanglo State Forest in 2010.  Matthew Milat struck Auchterlonie with the double-headed axe as Klein recorded the attack with a mobile phone.  This was the same forest where Ivan Milat had killed and buried his victims. 

Would David Auchterlonie be alive today, and Matthew Milat, Cohen Klein not be serving very long and costly gaol sentences, had Ivan Milat been executed by hanging promptly following been found guilty by a NSW court of sadistically murdering seven backpacker?   A conservative 'punter' would likely predict a reasonable likelihood, say 40%, that David Auchterlonie would still be sleeping, breathing and eating had Ivan Milat been swiftly executed and not gaoled until his death by natural causes.

Australia’s worst killers: 10 of our most evil murderers destined to spend life behind bars – Daily Telegraph – 2016.

A jury recently found Joshua Homann guilty of stabbing his pregnant partner 49 times in the bedroom of their Mount Druitt home in Sept. 2015, thereby ending two lives. He will likely be sentenced to life in a metal cage in a max. security prison at the taxpayers' expense.  The taxpayer is sentenced to pay for Joshua Homann’s monstrous murder of two others with no commensurate payment by the murderer involving the same fear of an imminent, cruel and painful death. 

Infant, Bradyn Dillon, suffered 'sadistic, demeaning' abuse before being killed by father.  Canberra father Graham Dillon sentenced to 36 years in jail for murder of 9yo son Bradyn.

Martin Bryant, Ivan Milat, Matthew Milat, Cohen Klein, Joshua Homann, Graham Dillon and other similar sadistic murderers should be hung by the neck until dead, with a least a dozen witnesses who are at liberty to describe what they witnessed to a waiting media to publicise the old adage, "An eye for an eye". and 'Justice is done!"

Viewers of a Four Corners programme would benefit as to the merit of murders such as Ivan Milat being spared the death penalty by hearing from retired NSW Police Assistant Commissioner, Clive Small, and any of his former 'task force' members re the final hours of any/each of the seven backpacker murders, in particular the sadistic streak in Milat and his method of killing.  It may influence some anti-Criminal punishment advocates to ponder their distain for the death penalty.  

---------------------------------------

The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics & Research has directed the Writer to the ABS webpage (and the directions to the specific Excel file - Then to the data section headed ‘downloads’, Then to the file “prisoner characteristics” Australia Tables 1 to 13, Then to table 12) that lists the number of prisoners in Australian gaols for various crimes. 

Below is an extract of Row 43 of Table 12 which shows 529 prisoners serving sentences in Australian gaols of 20 years and over:

 

Under 3 months

3 & under 6 months

6 & under 12 months

1& under 2 years

2 & under 5 years

5 & under 10 years

10 & under 15 years

15 & under 20 years

20 years & over

Unknown

Life

Other

Total

Homicide and related offences

4

3

10

36

215

389

341

496

529

4

404

48

2,486

7        The above details of a few notable murderers in Australia that mirror similar atrocities in the UK and Canada, evidence that ‘political correctness’, has over-corrected, and that we need to tilt back to former Capital and Corporal punishment methodology that was diligently applied in Australia to discourage similar atrocities (detailed in the first and third embedded threads in Section 4 above).  Time to turn-back-the-clock and re-adopt the Corporal and Capital punishment sentences that were assigned by the state Criminal Courts one hundred years ago - 1918

The current judicial system has abrogated its responsibilities to the deceased innocent victim/s in murder trials, which is a disappointing indictment of our legislature imposed at the ‘coal face’ by our judges.  If someone takes another human’s life in a vicious, painful and premeditated manner, then that murderer should pay swiftly with his or her life in a frightful and painful manner.  This realisation was/is fundamental to over 97% of all Homo sapiens that ever breathed oxygen on ‘terra firma’. 

The judicial system holds a duty of care to other possible victims (open to be slain by other potential mass murderers) to value and honour those lost lives by swiftly and similarly executing convicted murders, not confine them to a steel cage until they die from old age at the taxpayers’ considerable expense.  Australia, Great Britain and Canada have each tried long term incarceration since the middle of the 20th Century.  It is flawed as evidenced in the Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 in Section 5 above. 

Similarly, formal legislative abolition of Corporal Punishment across Australian states from the middle of the 20th Century was not thought through because Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 chronicle the high economic cost, social cost and re-offending rates by prisoners who learnt so much more about committing crime from other inmates whilst in gaol. 

The Writer recently discussed (with a retired magistrate) his views on the inefficiencies of long term incarceration as punishment for heinous crimes against other innocent human beings.  He told me that he could not support my views because of the occasional wrongful conviction which is subsequently reversed.  He found the prospect of executing an innocent man unacceptable, seemingly at any cost.

Other people contend that executing a convicted mass murderer is barbaric.

To seek to obtain a perspective of the value of a human life, as a reaction to the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in June 1914,  60,000 young Aussie males (from the other side of the planet) were coerced into dying in WWI for some cause that they did not understand, like 19 year old Alvin Wilfred McHugh from Ulverstone Tasmania.  Many lingered for weeks after being wounded, before dying from infection.  That was barbaric.  Yet that was condoned by the politicians that were perched ‘high on the hill’ and well away from physical danger.  There needs to be a relativity of the value of human life taken by a premeditated sadistic murderer.  An analogous price needs to be paid.

Proof of guilt is usually required to be “beyond a reasonable doubt”.  There needs to be a higher level of proof for sentencing a murderer to death because his/her heinous crime/s renders that he/she cannot be Rehabilitated.  If found guilty “beyond any doubt”, where every person in the jury finds the accused guilty beyond any doubt, then the murderer should be executed swiftly and frightfully.  Our forefathers got it right (for them). Our politicians in the middle of the last Century, merely transferred the problem to others at considerable social and economic costs to others.

Section 4 above includes:

            "Although Australia has abandoned capital punishment, it does not follow that it could never be reintroduced."

8.       Australia's prison incarceration system has NOT deterred/discouraged/diminished -
*        the scourge of drug trafficking; and
*        associated drug related social problems that include committing crimes to support an addiction 
Queensland drug trafficking convictions have increased by 330 per cent in 10 years

          Sentencing figures in 2010-2015 for traffickers of a large commercial quantity of a drug of dependence shows 88% received less than a quarter of the maximum possible gaol sentence

          Punishment that was sentenced 100 years ago across Australia, by -

          *        flogging in lieu of '10 years imprisonment' (C. below); and

          *        execution in lieu of 25 years imprisonment (B. below) or life imprisonment (A. below),
          would materially reduce -

          *        drug related social, economic and health problems; and

          *        the $16 billion a year cost of our criminal justice system

Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) is an independent prosecution service established by Parliament to prosecute alleged offences against Commonwealth law. CDPP webpage Drug Trafficking, Selling and Cultivation lists the following penalties for Trafficking, Selling and Cultivation:

  1.  life imprisonment for commercial quantity of controlled drugs

  2.  25 years’ imprisonment for marketable quantity of controlled drugs

  3.  10 years’ imprisonment for controlled drugs.

Below is an extract from Corporal punishment in Australia was usually by whipping (teenagers) or flogging (adults) until the mid 20th Century in Section 4 above:

"Men over 18 convicted in NSW of serious sexual crimes and some other offences (violent robbery, but also e.g. "malicious wounding of cattle") could be given up to 50 lashes of the cat-o'-nine-tails at each of three whippings.  This 1883 news item reports on what it says was the first such Judicial Corporal Punishment sentence under the then new Criminal Law Act.

Before that 1880s legislation, courts in NSW ordered men to receive "lashes on the breech (buttocks).  The earliest case currently to hand being in 1824; see also an 1841 case.

 

Below is an extract from SOCIETY’S RESPONSE TO THE VIOLENT OFFENDER - Australian Institute of Criminology

"Sentencing Options. The imposition of a criminal sentence upon a person convicted of a violent crime is an important public function. It often entails the most awesome power which can be wielded against a citizen -the deprivation of liberty. In years past, prior to the abolition of capital punishment, it could entail matters of life or death.

Because of the diversity of violence and the diversity of its perpetrators, no simple formula for the management of the violent offender can exist. What is required is flexibility to select from a set of diverse options, so that the response, be it punishment, treatment, or some combination of the two, fits not only the crime but the criminal."

DETERRENCE

One of the fundamental principles on which the criminal justice system is based is that of deterrence. It has become an article of faith that a person's decision to commit an act of violence will depend upon his or her perception of the probability of detection and punishment, the likely severity of that punishment, and, to a lesser extent, the speed with which that punishment will take place."

Below is an extract from Queensland drug trafficking convictions up 330 per cent in 10 years: report by Kristian Silva - 14 Feb 2018:

"Mick Palmer, a former Australian Federal Police commissioner, said a "one size fits all" approach did not work when it came to punishing drug traffickers, many of whom were low-level operators and addicts themselves. 
He said law enforcement agencies had enjoyed increased success, but "we can't police our way out of this". 
"No matter how many seizures we make or how many arrests we make for trafficking the unregulated nature of the market and the huge profits that are able to be obtained make it inevitable that the problems are going to continue," he said."

ABC News website lists hundreds of articles on Drug and Substance Abuse and the associated social and economic cost to the Australian economy that include:

9.      Corporal punishment in practice

10.     Newspaper articles on our prison system

Australia’s prison system isn’t working. It needs urgent attention 

Jane Fynes-Clinton -

"The need for recalibrating the criminal justice system has never been greater.  By almost every measure, Australia’s corrections systems are failing to serve the purpose they were designed for: to correct, rehabilitate and deter others.Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that by March, the population in Australian prisons had reached 40,577, up 10 per cent on the year before.

The state of imprisonment in Australia: it’s time to take stock - Marie Segrave   Senior Lecturer, Criminology, Monash Uni -

Below are extracts from Last man hanged: 50 years in Australia without an execution - BBC News - 2 Feb 2017

It happened after Martin Bryant shot dead 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania in 1996; the fire-bombing of Brisbane's Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub by James Finch and John Stuart in 1973, which killed 15; and the 2012 rape and strangulation of Jill Meagher, 29, by Adrian Ernest Bailey.

The death penalty was raised over the 2003 kidnapping and murder of Daniel Morcombe, 13, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, by Brett Peter Cowan; Julian Knight's 1987 Hoddle Street massacre in Melbourne; and Ivan Milat's "backpacker" murders in NSW in the 1980s and '90s.

Even this year, talk has resurfaced after a car was allegedly deliberately driven down a Melbourne pedestrian mall, killing six people and injuring dozens. Dimitrious "Jimmy" Gargasoulas, 26, faces murder and other charges.

Crusading commentator-turned-politician Derryn Hinch opposed capital punishment for decades before the horrific rape and murder of Sydney nurse, Anita Cobby, by five men, including three brothers, in 1986.  Hinch, a senator who heads his own Justice Party, says the death penalty should apply in cases such as Knight's, where no doubts exist.

"If Australia had the death penalty, a lot of young women could be alive today," Hinch wrote in 2012.The recent case of a motorist accused of deliberately killing people in Melbourne has shocked the nation

"Mersina Halvagis (fatally stabbed as she tended her grandmother's grave in Melbourne in 1997) would be alive today. Her killer, Peter Dupas, would have been executed after his first murders. If sex offenders served their full term behind bars, Jill Meagher could be alive today," he said.

"If our touchy-feely parole boards spent half as much time considering victims and their families as they do to rushing serial, violent criminals back on to the streets, this world would be a safer place. And if a federal government had the guts - or a state government had the independence and backbone - to hold a referendum on the return of capital punishment for some crimes, it would pass by a majority of about 75% to 25%."

11.    Cost-effective methods to -

          *        punish and rehabilitate criminal offenders; and

          *        deter other similar transgressors,

          advocated by practitioners 'at the coal face'

Below are two extracts from Prisons at breaking point, but Australia is still addicted to incarceration:

"For Eileen Baldry, a leading criminologist and University of New South Wales deputy vice-chancellor, it’s a hard-headed approach, one that sucks up billions of dollars that could otherwise go towards addressing the root causes of criminality through early intervention, diversion, prevention or rehabilitation programs.

Baldry says prison overcrowding is a product of failed political leadership, and shows governments are unable to withstand the populist compulsion to incarcerate and appear tough on crime.

“I think it’s also a failure of intellectual or evidence-based leadership,” Baldry says. “I have talked to a number of treasurers over decades in NSW, for example, and laid out in front of them the cost of doing this.

“In many ways, many people in the public service understand this and do put these kinds of arguments forward. But, you know, treasurers and other ministers, when I talk to them, and this is both sides of politics, they say, ‘Look, I know that, I understand that, but it will just not fly with the public. It just will not fly with the cabinet.’'

---------------------------------------

"Former NSW director of public prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdrey, is one of those championing justice reinvestment. He is lobbying the NSW government to invest in the program in the 2018-19 budget.

He agrees the overcrowding problem is a failure of political leadership, and an inability to see past short-term electoral cycles.

“Sensible policy, especially in this area, takes more than three or four years to bear fruit and politicians prefer to stick with the tried and tested approach of ‘tough on crime,’” Cowdrey said.

“There doesn’t seem to be much room for ‘smart on crime’. The community bears the cost and the consequences of such tunnel-visioned policy.”

Prison has long been considered an option of last resort in the criminal justice system.

But Cowdrey believes it is no longer being applied in that way. The rising incarceration rate, he said, is largely a product of increases to maximum sentences and tougher restrictions on bail.

“Despite the lip service paid to the requirement that imprisonment be the punishment of last resort, it is not so used,” he said.

Below is an extract from Australia's jail population hits record high after 20-year surge

"Keith Hamburger, who formerly ran Queensland’s jail system as the state’s first director general of corrective services, said prisons “basically around the country at the moment are overcrowded”.

But “just building more prison cells and stuffing people into them is not the answer”.

Most in jail were on short sentences and with a lack of treatment programs to help stop reoffending. The system cried out for “a different approach from our policymakers”, Hamburger said.

“We need high-security prisons for dangerous long term offenders,” he told the Guardian. “But we are building far too many prison cells for people who churn through, spend weeks or a few months on remand, a few months in jail, then go out again.”

Surging prison numbers were one result of populist “tough on crime” lawmaking by state governments, including mandatory sentencing and tougher hurdles for bail, Hamburger said.

Many people, especially women, were stuck in jail because they could not access safe accommodation or drug treatment programs they needed for otherwise willing magistrates to grant bail, Hamburger said.

“Now, if we had bail hostels with substance abuse programs attached to them, we could take a lot of people out of remand prisons around Australia tomorrow,” Hamburger said.

“We’re just going about this the wrong way because it’s ridiculous when somebody gets a bail order, particularly for women offenders, and they’ve got a substance abuse problem and inappropriate or unsafe accommodation, and we slot them into jail instead of looking for a more cost-effective option."

“If government put a bit of effort into that in terms of times and resources, that’d be far more cost-effective than jail.”

Hamburger said the Indigenous imprisonment rate was “shocking and in terms of trying to do something, I reckon that’s low-hanging fruit”.

He is a proponent of Indigenous enterprises being given a bigger role in running “a lot of these hostels and healing and rehabilitation facilities” to cut imprisonment rates.

One of the few signs of any fall in jail statistics was the Indigenous imprisonment rate in the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, which both fell by 4% in the last year, according to the ABS.

Hamburger said the rise in overall prison numbers demanded “meaningful” action on two main fronts: rehabilitating offenders and getting them back to a “law-abiding lifestyle” in their community, and “dealing with the drivers of social and economic dislocation that a lot of communities are experiencing”.

“Most [offenders] come from difficult socioeconomic backgrounds, have had problematic education experiences and many come from abusive and neglectful families,” Hamburger said. “Than we put them in prisons, which are basically [overcrowded] around the country.

“There’s a lack of treatment programs and the great majority of sentences are relatively short sentences.

“So just building more prison cells and stuffing people into them is not the answer.”

Below is an extract from The small town trying to shift spending from punishment to prevention

Economic sense

Championed originally in the US in response to huge overcrowding in prisons, justice reinvestment involves the redirection of corrections budgets to community priorities. Instead of spending money on keeping people in prison, it invests in prevention: in health, education, housing, employment – whatever helps.

The Aboriginal barrister and academic Prof Mick Dodson says few people realise that it costs $400,000 a year to keep a young person locked up in juvenile detention in NSW.

“If Cowra’s got 10 of them locked up, you do the maths,” he says. “That’s $4m. Why not spend that money in the community doing good things that keep those kids out of trouble?”

He hastens to say that justice reinvestment is not a silver bullet or a free-for-all: “We’re not talking about keeping everyone out of prison because some people who commit offences that are horrendous are a danger to society and have to be locked up. But we’re talking about people who can’t pay their fines, doing low-level crime.”

Australia is now spending $4bn a year on prisons: “That’s a lot of money and it’s unsustainable.”

But although a Senate investigation recommended a justice reinvestment approach three years ago, Australian governments have been slow on the uptake.

The Maranguka justice reinvestment project in Bourke is the only major scheme in the country. South Australia has committed to two trials, and the Australian Capital Territory has an official policy but no active program.

Cowra is a community of about 12,000 people, with a “strong and proud” Aboriginal community who make up 7% of the population, compared with 2% nationally. During many consultations over the three years, the research team, led by Guthrie, met with representatives from education, employment, health, community service, police, judiciary and business sectors, as well as young people, parents, grandparents and carers.

Kendal Street, Cowra’s main road. The town’s Aboriginal population is ‘strong and proud’.

“Often communities are asked to spend a bucket of money in a certain amount of time and this was the opposite of that,” Guthrie says. “There was no bucket of money, no promise of funds at the end.”

In the end, Guthrie says, the project’s approach freed people up to think more broadly, “to not think within the constraints of a certain amount of money”.

The research team calculated that the cost of incarcerating Cowra citizens over the past 10 years had amounted to $42m. Community representatives then worked through the crime categories behind that cost, and selected which crimes they believed could or should be dealt with by non-custodial sentences. They came up with eight categories:

1. Traffic offences
2. Public order offences
3. Justice procedure offences
4. Property damage
5. Drug offences
6. Fraud and deception
7. Theft
8. Unlawful entry with intent/burglary, break and enter

Those categories, dubbed as “JR-amenable”, equated to about 50% of crimes committed, offering a justice reinvestment “saving” and potential funding pool of $23m over 10 years.

What to spend the ‘saved’ money on?

Priorities for reinvestment in Cowra included: service mapping (noting the difference between availability and access to services); keeping young people engaged in education at all costs, through after-school, suspension, homework and mentoring programs; employment and skills development; personal safety with an emphasis on housing (emergency, halfway houses, hostels); and community transport.

Guthrie says the research has built a model for other communities to explore and is hopeful it will result in a scheme in Cowra. “I think we’d find it quite painful to have to break the relationship now,” she says. “We’ve built the trust both ways.”

West, the mayor, says he has been pleasantly surprised by the support in the community. He says: “We have young people out there who deserve to be looked after. You don’t have to be young to make mistakes and get it wrong, so it’s nice to be a caring and compassionate and civilised community, to give people a fair go.”

But he says the state government’s response to Cowra’s work has been “frustratingly slow”.

The federal opposition leader, Bill Shorten, highlighted Cowra’s work in his response last week to the latest Closing the Gap report card on Indigenous disadvantage, and the local state Nationals MP, Katrina Hodgkinson, has championed the town’s plan within the NSW government.

But that political support is yet to translate into funding. “I’m personally disappointed the progress has been very slow to date,” West says, adding that Cowra’s proposal is exciting, innovative and backed by broad community support and in-depth research. “The government has nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

Why wouldn’t they be absolutely grabbing it with two hands?

The community wants about $750,000 over three years to appoint a program coordinator and fund early groundwork and evaluation, including liaison with the more established justice reinvestment program in Bourke.

The NSW attorney general’s department says it “has received the application and will arrange a meeting with the Cowra Justice Reinvestment project team to discuss the proposal”.

Hodgkinson is more inclined to blame the “slow wheels” of bureaucracy than government inaction but also admits she is frustrated by the pace of progress. She says a detailed proposal for funding was submitted to the then attorney general, Gabrielle Upton, last October, but she has been making strong representations for nearly a year.

“Why would they be wanting to delay something that’s going to have great community acceptance [and] be a positive for the New South Wales budget overall?” she asked. “I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t they be absolutely grabbing it with two hands and saying ‘let’s get on with it, let’s just do it’?”

Below is an extract from Australia spending more on prisons, policing than other comparable countries: report

The report, by conservative think tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), said despite spending an estimated $16 billion a year on our criminal justice system, Australians felt less safe than the citizens of many comparable countries.

Author Andrew Bushnell said Australia's $4 billion prison system had created a "class of persistent criminals" because it was failing to reform inmates.

The report — Australia's Criminal Justice Costs: An International Comparison — said Australian prisons were the fifth most expensive among 29 countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands made up the top three.

In Australia in 2015, the cost of putting one person behind bars for a year was nearly $110,000. The OECD average was $69,000 per person.

The study found incarceration rates are growing rapidly — there are now 36,000 prisoners in Australia, up 39 per cent from a decade ago.

"Over the past five years, international figures show Australia's incarceration growth has outstripped that of many comparable countries," the report said.

"Fellow common law countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand all reduced their incarceration levels over the [same] period."

Chart: Australian prisoner spend

The report also found Australians spent more per capita on police than many other OECD countries.

In 2015, Australia is estimated to have spent $427 per person on police services — ranking ninth highest in the OECD.

"All of the countries ranked higher on this measure either have significant terror threats or small populations," the report said.

Mr Bushnell said Australia's level of policing was now higher than all other common law countries apart from Ireland, at 295 police per 100,000 citizens for the year 2015-16.

Australians 'worried about crime levels'

Despite the growth of spending on prisons and police, Australians are more worried than ever about crime levels, according to the IPA report.

It noted that in four polls between 2007 and 2014, Gallup asked people around the world whether they felt safe walking in their neighbourhoods at night.

Australia ranked in the bottom third of OECD countries in every poll, never higher than 20th — and, in the most recent poll, as low as 24th.

Data from the independent government advisory body, the Productivity Commission, backs this up, Mr Bushnell said.

In 2015-16 only 51.7 per cent surveyed said they felt safe walking home at night, while less than a quarter felt safe on public transport at night.

The report found there was "mixed evidence" for whether crime was really more prevalent in Australia than in other developed countries.

International comparisons of crime rates are notoriously unreliable, but one statistic that is broadly comparable is homicide.

On this measure, Australia ranks in the middle band of 29 OECD countries, albeit higher than the UK and New Zealand, and much higher than Japan and Norway.

However, since 2006, Australia has seen a 41 per cent decrease in its homicide rate — from 1.7 per 100,000 people to 1 per 100,000 people.

Prisons creating 'class of persistent criminals'

Mr Bushnell said his research indicated Australian prisons were ineffective in correcting criminal behaviour.

Almost 60 per cent of prisoners had been imprisoned before and 45 per cent of prisoners released during 2013-14 returned to prison within two years.

This, he argued, had created a "class of persistent criminals".

 Prison rates since Federation

The report advocates evidence-based reforms, including locking up only the most dangerous criminals and dealing with non-violent, low-risk offenders by way of home detention, community service, fines, and restitution orders.

Mr Bushnell said police resources should be concentrated in postcodes where crime was most prevalent and more money should be spent on preparing prisoners for the workforce.

"No-one doubts that prisons and police are vital government expenditures. But we are entitled to value for money and we're not getting it," he said.

 Below is an extract from The expensive problem with our prisons: Why spending more doesn't make us feel safer  -  Andrew Bushnell

Alternatives to prison

When you consider Australia has a high level of reoffending, with more than half of released prisoners returning to corrections within two years, it is clear that our increased criminal justice spending is not yielding the results we might rightly expect.

Addressing this underperformance should begin with punishment reform for non-violent, low-risk offenders. Violent criminals must be imprisoned to keep the community safe. But for other offenders, measures like home detention and community service — properly supervised of course — can achieve both retribution and better rehabilitation outcomes.

Reducing reoffending is the best way to reduce incarceration spending and crime. Unemployment is a known correlate of crime, and the ample resources of our prisons should be directed towards job training and literacy and numeracy. Policing has also been shown to be effective in reducing crime, but merely increasing police numbers is not enough. Police resources must be carefully targeted to known sources of crime.

Below is an extract from Call for complete rethink as prison population, recidivism explode

Dr. Weatherburn, the director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, called for a complete rethink of the way crime is dealt with in the face of an exploding prison population and a political obsession with being "tough on crime".

Despite crime rates falling sharply since 2001, the prison population has increased, largely due to more people –

·         being refused bail,

·         receiving prison terms for minor crimes; and

·         staying in for longer.

Australia has about 36,000 prisoners and is spending more than $2.6 billion a year keeping them there. It is the most expensive and least effective form of reducing crime.

To reverse the trend, Dr Weatherburn floated a five-point plan that included locking up fewer offenders for minor assaults scrapping suspended sentences and "toning down the political rhetoric".

With the prison population in NSW hitting new records each month – it rose 12 per cent last year to reach 12,121 in January – so too has the number of men and women getting stuck in the revolving door of incarceration.

Below is an extract from BOCSAR crime stats boss Don Weatherburn calls for lighter prison sentences

Sarah Hopkins, a managing solicitor for the Aboriginal Legal Service and chair of Just Reinvest NSW, said workers in the justice system had reached "an all-time high level of frustration".

"We have this entrenched public conversation around ... the need to punish and the power of punishment to deter crime. When you look at the evidence, it simply isn't true. Harsh punishment does not deter people from committing crime," she said.

Just Reinvest, a pilot project in Bourke, re-aligns money that would have been spent on the criminal justice system towards education, treatment and other services to tackle the causes of crime.

"With rates of incarceration of indigenous people, it's such an urgent problem and it would be such a development if people could just start embracing a commonsense approach," she said."

She said there was a myth that victims of crime want harsher punishment. "Everybody would agree what victims of crime want is that the crime doesn't happen at all."

The Productivity Commission found 44.3 per cent of adult prisoners released in 2012-13 returned to prison within two years, an increase from 39.9 per cent in 2010-11. In NSW, the average cost per inmate, per day, is $237.34.

A spokeswoman for the NSW government said they would consider the contents of Dr Weatherburn's paper. "Community safety is the government's number one priority and this requires an efficient and effective justice system," she said.

Below is an extract from Back to prison  -  Background Briefing

In NSW, it’s approximately $250. By contrast, the work of Community Restorative Centre ("CRC") was costing an estimated $70 per day. Governments continue to spend much more on locking people up than on the cheaper options that prevent people returning to jail.

Lou Schetzer, from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, says: ‘It's dumb public policy. It's dumb economics. It's costing the taxpayer an enormous amount for these people to be continually re-offending and re-incarcerated. And we really need to look at a better way of investing the public dollar that encourages that reintegration into society so that people who are released from prison can make that valuable contribution to society.’

The Department of Corrective Services says that under the new system, it will be spending twice as much as it is currently on transition programs. But there are concerns about the efficacy of the new three month programs, whether the pay rates can attract the degree of skilled staff needed for complex clients, and about case loads.

Professor Eileen Baldry from the University of NSW, researches prison populations. Up to half of prisoners have a mental health disorder, and a significant minority—up to 15 per cent—have a cognitive impairment. Professor Baldry has found that there’s significant overlap of those and other issues.

‘Post-release,’ she says, ‘you really need skilled workers, you need a range of connections to the range of service provisions that that person will need, and you need time.’

‘This is not something which is going to be addressed in three months or six months. It’s something that’s going to take a long time.’

There’s a dearth of research in Australia on what works in post-release programs. However, Professor Baldry says overseas research makes clear what model is necessary.

‘[What] we know works is, some people call it “wrap around”, some people call it holistic, some people call it a “fully supported housing project”. That’s the kind of program that is most useful. Because what it does, it addresses either sequentially or at the same time, a lot of those issues.’

‘Work, particularly in the United Kingdom, some in Canada and a bit in the United States, shows very clearly that the recidivism rates from those kinds of programs are very low.’

Don Weatherburn, the director of the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, says governments should be focussing on recidivism above all else.

‘Well it's hugely important,’ he says. ‘We tend to preoccupy ourselves with creating alternatives to prison, forgetting that most people going to prison this year, or last year, are actually going back to prison.’

There’s more leverage, he says, in reducing the prison population by reducing the rate of return to prison, rather than reducing the number of people who go there in the first instance.

Tackling recidivism is not politically popular, however. The last NSW politician who tried was the recently dumped Attorney-General, Greg Smith.

His former media advisor, legal journalist Michael Pelly, says Mr Smith’s interest in keeping people out of jail, where possible, was popular for a while—including with the new Premier, Mike Baird, who was then the treasurer. Prison numbers came down, and jails were closed.

‘The treasurer thought this was tremendous,’ says Mr Pelly. ‘Less money: $70,000 a year for an adult, $250,000 a year for a juvenile.’

‘That adds up to a lot of hospital beds you can provide. And a lot of deficit and infrastructure you can build. And that was all going very well until the pressure went on, and the whole notion that anybody would be seen as soft on crime.’

According to Mr Pelly, the pressure came largely from one source: 2GB’s Ray Hadley.

‘Ray has very solid links to the police and has a very particular view about law and order policy, and his voice is extremely influential.’

‘Each parliamentary office up at Parliament has a radio selection. And I can assure you that from 9 o clock to 12 o'clock, I'd say 80 per cent of parliamentarians had Ray Hadley on the radio and had Ray Hadley telling them for a good four months that Greg Smith is soft on crime, was a raving lunatic, that Barry [O’Farrell] should sack him.’

Gradually, Mr Smith lost the support of his colleagues. Mr Pelly says he was frustrated that amid the noise of the law and order rhetoric, the fact that the Attorney-General was aiming for a safer community was lost.

‘This is the whole folly of the exercise. That it doesn't allow for a nuanced approach.’

‘Don't forget we were a penal colony, founded on the idea that people could get a fresh start. Macquarie emancipated the convicts, made them productive members of society.’

Below is an extract from Australia’s prison system isn’t working. It needs urgent attention -  Jane Fynes-Clinton  Aug 2017

 

 

                    "But looking squarely at the bitter reality of our crime statistics, considering alternatives to jail for more offences, spending on correcting instead of warehousing and trusting that our police are keeping us safe are big steps towards a fairer, safer and more just community."

 

 

Below is an extract from Queensland drug trafficking convictions up 330 per cent in 10 years: report by Kristian Silva - 14 Feb 2018:

"Mick Palmer, a former Australian Federal Police commissioner, said a "one size fits all" approach did not work when it came to punishing drug traffickers, many of whom were low-level operators and addicts themselves. 
He said law enforcement agencies had enjoyed increased success, but "we can't police our way out of this". 
"No matter how many seizures we make or how many arrests we make for trafficking the unregulated nature of the market and the huge profits that are able to be obtained make it inevitable that the problems are going to continue," he said."

12.     Previous polls and ballots on the pros and cons of Capital and Corporal punishment have failed to present all the associated tangible and intangible costs and benefits, so as to make an informed decision

Below is an extract from Capital punishment in Australia:

“In Australia, capital punishment was banned on a state-by-state basis through the 20th Century.  Despite the ban, polls have indicated varying support for the reintroduction of the practice.  A 2005 Bulletin poll showed that most Australians supported capital punishment.  The Australian National University's 2007 Electoral Survey found that 44 per cent of people thought the death penalty should be reintroduced, while only 38 per cent disagreed. In the recent case of the Bali bombers, then prime minister John Howard stated that Australians expected their execution by Indonesia.[22][23]” 

 

13.       Problems with the prison system in other countries

  1. Re-offending rates

  2. Overcrowding

  3. Prisoner suicides

  4. Prisoner violence and assaulting prison staff

  5. Self-harm

  6. Drug taking

  7. Mental health

Below are extracts from

In 2015, in his last annual report as Chief Inspector of Prisons in England, Nick Hardwick said jails were in their worst state for a decade.

Last year, David Cameron, in one of his final domestic policy speeches as prime minister, said reoffending rates and levels of prison violence, drug-taking and self-harm "should shame us all".

"Even Liz Truss, who as justice secretary has overall responsibility for prisons, acknowledges that they're "not working" and are under "serious and sustained pressure".

There have always been problems. For many years, internal reports painted a picture of daily outbreaks of violence, cell fires and self-harm across the prisons estate.

Below is an extract from 'Conclusion: A system in crisis' of Crisis in Correctional Services in Canada:  Overcrowding and inmates with mental health problems in provincial correctional facilities - April 2015

This overview of Canada’s correctional system leaves us with a disturbing picture. We have focused primarily on provincial correctional facilities, but indications are that the situation is just as bad in territorial centres.

Without a doubt, the majority of provincial correctional facilities in this country are either at capacity or overcrowded. We have seen reports of institutions operating at nearly 200 per cent capacity, twice as many inmates as the facility was built to hold.

However, as we have also seen, figures can be deceiving, and may seriously underestimate the situation. The stated capacity of some institutions has been altered to reflect the normalization of double-bunking, and renovations made to older facilities may have created more room, but not necessarily adequate facilities. The new capacity figures may also reflect the fact that cell sizes are smaller and common areas have been reduced.

With overcrowding there appears to be an increase in violence and serious incidents, from inmate-on-inmate violence to incidences between inmates and correctional officers. While most of the reports we have cited are careful not to proclaim a direct causal relationship between overcrowding and violence, they all see the two as having some connection.

Below is an extract from Why the U.S. Needs to Start Paying Attention to Sweden's Remarkable Prison System - Jan. 27, 2015

          In Nordic countries like Sweden, which have far lower incarceration and crime rates, prison is about rehabilitation. And it works far more effectively.  

Sweden's prison system boasts impressive numbers. As the Guardian notes, in the past decade, the number of Swedish prisoners has dropped from 5,722 to 4,500 out of a population of 9.5 million. The country has closed a number of prisons, and the recidivism rate is around 40%, which is far less than in the U.S. and most European countries.

Öberg believes that the way Sweden treats its prisoners is partly responsible for keeping incarceration and recidivism rates so low.  

"It has to do with whether you decide to use prison as your first option or as a last resort, and what you want your probation system to achieve," he told the Guardian. "Some people have to be incarcerated, but it has to be a goal to get them back out into society in better shape than they were when they came in."

In an insightful article in the Atlantic, Doran Larson explains how his research on prisons revealed that Nordic countries' rehabilitative ethos produces tangible results for those countries. Even in the high-security prisons he visited in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, he observed some remarkable things:

While high-security prisons in the U.S. often involve caging and dehumanizing a prisoner, prisons in Nordic countries are designed to treat them as people with psychosocial needs that are to be carefully attended to. Prison workers fulfill a dual role of enforcer and social worker, balancing behavioral regulation with preparation for re-entry into society.

It seems that there's a self-fulfilling dimension to the way a society chooses to imprison those that it deems criminal: If you tell someone they cannot get better, they won't; if you tell someone they can, they might just have a decent shot.

 =========================

  1.       The woman who watched 300 executions in Texas

2.       '20,000 lashes for murder': Liberal Party branch to debate proposal for corporal punishment

 

 

 

[bottom.htm]