Defining " Crime " !

The New South Wales prison system is at crisis point.  Put simply, our jails are full and holding 12,140 prisoners and the overflow is now spending up to three hundred hours in the cells of police stations, with police officers tasked with both guarding them and ferrying in fast food to keep them fed.

We tightened bail laws after it was found that many granted bail were continuing alarming criminal activities and a " lock them up " mentality from voters put politicians under pressure.  At the same time, budget shortfalls led to the closure of Parramatta prison in 2011 and Kirkconnell in 2012 and the downgrading of Grafton.  To ease pressure, Kirkconnel has been reopened to provide 260 additional beds and Grafton extended to take an extra 90 prisoners - but our prison system is still below the capacity to hold those who are refused bail.

Corrective Services are contemplating increasing capacity by ramming three prisoners into cells originally designed to hold a single prisoner.  At present, such cells have been doubled up to hold two people and with three it will be similar to Sardines in a can.  Considering that many in the prison population have psychiatric problems and are seriously unbalanced, this will actually put prisoners in danger and elevate the liklihood of riots and bedlam that are a scourge of many overcrowded prison hell holes in other countries.

Prison should be the last resort available to a judge considering the sentence to be imposed on a person who has committed a crime - but defining a " crime " means many different things to different people.  Many people serving time in our prisons are guilty of  offences like habitually driving a car when their license has been suspended, while others are there for what really amounts to failure to pay money owing.

A " Community Service " sentence was supposed to weed out minor criminals from the herd and have them serve their time on a sort of weekend detention.  They would report at a given time to Corrective Services officers who would supervise them doing tasks such as clearing overgrown long abandoned cemeteries or doing civic projects that were beyond the financial resources of local councils.  This was partially successful, but many failed to show and it seems that this crowding problem prevented a prison penalty for such a failure to eventuate.

We need to consider an intermediate option that has been very successful in Scandinavian countries. Prisoners under sentence for non violent crimes and what are termed " social issues " serve their time on a prison farm with low security.   These are productive units tasked with supplying the needs of both the hospital system and other prisons and are a reward for good behaviour, but should a detainee escape, automatic imprisonment for a much longer sentence would be served upon recapture.

Our present prison system lumps together those who committed shocking murders with white collar criminals who fiddled the books and stole an amount of money.  The only differential is the grade of prison to which they are committed - with the very worst housed in the Supermax at Goulburn.  Our prisons are often termed the " University of Crime " because young men serving their first term often emerge as hardened criminals.  It would be helpful to break that nexus.

Isolation from family and friends is in itself a form of punishment and many would respond well to entering into a trust arrangement, serving time with lower security, but with the certainty that abusing that privilege will see them inside a very grim prison for a very long time.

Perhaps our " once size fits all " method of imprisonment needs thought !