Prison Reform !

There is no doubt that prison overcrowding in New South Wales is at desperation point.  We are cramming three prisoners into cells designed to hold a single occupant and this has led to riots that required tear gas to control.  The inability to house new prisoners is putting added pressure on both the courts and the cells that local police stations use for holding prisoners overnight.

This overcrowding manifests itself in people given bail - who should remain locked up - and reoffending by prisoners who have been given early release to ease the pressure.  Now there are moves to reopen Parramatta jail on a temporary basis - and that will simply waste a lot of good money that would be better spent on a long term solution to our prison problem.

Parramatta jail first opened in 1798 - in the convict transportation era - and it was constructed accordingly.   It was designed to hold 580 prisoners under the conditions favoured at that time, and which would not be tolerated today - and the building is now such a wreck that it was closed down and passed into the control of the local Aboriginal Land council.   Before anything can be done, it will be necessary to negotiate with the Land council to sign a lease - and pay rent to reuse this prison.

Kirkonnell - a much smaller jail - was recently reopened and had four million dollars spent on it.  The estimate to partially restore Parramatta will run to many times that figure, and we will still have a prison with a design that harks back to a past century.   Parramatta can never be a modern penitentiary short of demolition and a complete rebuild.

The problem is that prison reform always gets the short end of the stick.   It is said that there are no votes in prison reform.   There are votes in glitzy new road solutions or new trains to serve the suburbs of Sydney and politicians crowd to be at the laying of foundation stones, but spending money on prisons always gets pushed onto the back burner.

There seems to be a quaint notion that crime is some sort of temporary problem - that we will miraculously learn how to reduce one day.   The population of this state continues to expand and part of that increase will be a natural percentage of criminals that we will need to reform.  In some other countries they have learned how to make prisons productive and with an increased rehabilitation success but we are still employing the same methods of a century ago.

The big problem seems to be the "one size fits all " solution to incarceration.  We have the "Supermax "to house very dangerous people at one end of the spectrum and prison farms for those nearing the end of their sentence, but the vast majority are still housed locked away behind bars. Depriving a person of their liberty is an effective form of punishment and the state would benefit from more open institutions tasked with teaching prisoners new skills and making them more productive to offset the cost of their board and keep.  The temptation to escape would be curbed by the reality that to do so would result in a far longer sentence under much tougher conditions.

Instead of restoring crumbling convict era prisons, the money would be better spent on productive centres which would thin out the prison population in the existing  system and make them workable. New construction is always way cheaper than restoration work.   The fact that overcrowding is forcing the government to take action brings with it an opportunity to put in place a new regime that may actually reduce crime.

If the present system is not delivering results, it is time to try something new !