Lock ’em up mentality is costing us dearly

At costs of nearly $4 billion a year and growing, prisons have a poor record when it comes to rehabilitation.

Towards the end of last year the Institute of Public Affairs released welcome recognition that the expense of incarcerating more and more people is an unsustainable burden for the community to bear.

At costs of nearly $4 billion a year and growing, the IPA also pointed out that prisons have a poor record when it comes to rehabilitating people.

This means that, despite the fact that we are imprisoning people at the highest rate per head of population since Federation, those increased rates are not leading to a reduction in recidivism.

Certainly, it is encouraging that conservative institutions such as the IPA are engaging with this debate and calling for alternatives to incarceration for low-risk, nonviolent offenders.

Equally, it is encouraging that the IPA has called for an end to mandatory sentencing. As shown in many conservatively governed states in the US, progress on some of these more complex social challenges can only be made when some of the less-than-usual suspects get involved.

That said, it is hard to ignore the evidence. After all, while a small proportion of more hardened offenders require incarceration, the Victorian Ombudsman’s 2015 report made it palpably clear that, overall, our prison system is a reflection of the various ways in which we have, as a society, failed certain sectors of the population, warehousing people with low educations; with mental illness and acquired brain injury; with histories of family violence and sexual abuse victimisation; and who hail from socioeconomically disadvantaged postcodes.

Having recognised that this approach is both ineffective and incredibly expensive, the IPA has called for a redirection of resources away from the cost and destructive effects of criminogenic environments which, for most people, simply provide a more intensive education in crime.

Unfortunately, however, the IPA’s suggestion for where these resources should be redirected has landed at the wrong destination. In fact — despite all the evidence of success from those same conservative US state administrations about the value of taking resources from prisons and reinvesting them in education and local communities — the IPA argues that these resources should be invested in expanded police forces instead.

Of course, a strong and well supported police force is important. But the suggestion that costs will be reduced if we simply pour more resources into detecting and prosecuting crime completely ignores the consequences of that investment.

Certainly, governments know and sometimes learn the hard way that for every extra dollar invested in extra police officers, commensurate spending is ultimately required for public legal assistance; for more judicial officers; for more corrections officers and — again — prison beds down the track. If this downstream investment does not flow, ultimately the system grinds to a screaming halt.

Unless the role of these additional police officers is completely reconceived — unless the objective of these officers is to intervene early and to divert as many low-risk offenders from the criminal justice system as possible — the economics of this suggestion just don’t make sense.

The evidence is clear, and figures from the US and other jurisdictions around the world show where the savings the IPA advocates can actually be found.

The savings can be found when we reinvest resources even earlier — when we invest in education and social services in highly disadvantaged and overly criminalised communities so that we stop people committing crime in the first place.

In fact, since taking this approach, several US states have even been able to close prisons and save billions in the process.

Not surprisingly, the IPA’s focus may be on a much smaller cohort of offenders — those who may currently risk being incarcerated for crimes such as insider training and mishandling trust accounts, and who may be able to make restitution to the victims of their crimes.

As a result, however, it seems to have missed the point that the vast majority of people in our prisons are there because of myriad forms of disadvantage: because they are poor; because they come from intergenerational unemployment; because they grew up never knowing any stable family environment.

Similarly, a disproportionate number are there because of historic racism and discrimination; racism, it’s sad to say, that is sometimes perpetuated by the police force the IPA wants to expand.

If we truly want to save money, therefore, our focus should not be on reducing incarceration for white-collar criminals and increasing the number of police either to deter or arrest the remainder, as advocated by the IPA. If we truly want to save money and make the community safer, instead our focus should be on increasing social capital for every member of the population.

Rob Hulls is director of the Centre for Innovative Justice at RMIT University