A long, hard look inside our jails would benefit all of us

February 4, 2011
National Times

One of the most telling commentaries on all that is wrong with prisons was made recently by American law professor David Cole. ''We commit offenders to such places precisely so we will not have to pay attention to them,'' he wrote in an article for the New York Review of Books.

In Australia since the 1980s, state - and sometimes federal - politicians have campaigned relentlessly on simplistic ''tough on crime'' platforms. They would have you believe that locking up criminals is the answer to all society's ills.

It is precisely this ''out of sight, out of mind'' approach that Cole is talking about in regard to the US prison system, but politicians have distorted expectations and understandings of what imprisoning people can achieve.

While there is no argument that society needs prisons to protect it from violent criminals, there is a growing realisation here, and in the US and Britain, that for other offenders it isn't really working.

In all three countries prison populations are expanding and public expenditure on corrections is rising. Crime rates, however, are not falling. In fact, many people increasingly believe this over-reliance on incarceration is having the opposite effect.

In the US, it is business leaders who have been speaking out on the need for a new approach.

Locking up huge numbers of offenders is damaging the economy, a group of executives from five states argued in a Pew report last year. It is draining the public purse of money that should be spent on education and training that would help keep people out of jail, and is denying state economies valuable human capital. FULL STORY