Prisoners - Legal Information Access Centre - NSW Government

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How Imprisonment Rates Vary AusTrAliAn sTATes And TerriTOries The Australian imprisonment rate in 2007 was 169.4 per 100,000 but this obscures the significant state and territory differences. The Northern Territory rate was 595.2, more than double that of the next highest state which was Western Australia with 241.9. New South Wales is next with 195.4, followed by Queensland 174, South Australia 143.9, Tasmania, 140.6, Victoria 104.6 and the Australian Capital Territory 90.6. 34 Historically the high imprisoning states and territories have been those with high Indigenous populations: the NT and WA, followed by Qld, NSW and SA. These figures are clearly not a function of population size for the two territories, which have the smallest populations, the NT and ACT have both the highest and lowest imprisonment rates with the NT over six times that of the ACT. Change in Imprisonment Rates, between 30 June 1997 and 30 June 2007, states and territories 600 400 200 0 1997 2007 NSW(b) VIC QLD SA WA TAS NT ACT(c) AUST (a) Rate per 100,000 adult population. (b) Data for NSW exclude ACT prisoners held in NSW prisons. (c) Data for ACT include prisoners held in NSW prisons. Source: ABS Prisoners in Australia 2007 (2008). An interesting contrast is that between NSW and Victoria, two high population eastern seaboard states. Since the 1980s Victoria has managed to maintain an imprisonment rate around half that of NSW. Attempts to explain this disparity have pointed to higher volumes of criminal cases entering NSW courts, higher serious offending rates, more punitive sentencing, the existence of periodic detention and greater use of imprisonment for fine default in NSW, but all these factors are partial explanations only. 35 The crime rate in the NT is only 50% higher than Victoria and the same as NSW, which suggests that when comparing crime rates to imprisonment rates, a broader range of factors are relevant. 36 In particular, local sentencing preferences and policies may lead to a form of ‘discretionary imprisonment’. 37 Explaining the difference in imprisonment rates between NSW and Victoria, requires looking at the effects of a whole range of social, political, legal and cultural factors. Among these are: > what kinds of behaviour the legislature and judiciary define as criminal; > the level of police funding and political and media pressure for certain sorts of policing; > how the police define their priorities and exercise their considerable discretion; > the availability of police diversionary schemes such as warnings, cautions and conferencing; > how prosecutors exercise their discretion not to prosecute or to discontinue prosecutions; > whether defendants are represented by lawyers; > the range of sentencing alternatives available in particular jurisdictions and the sentencing practices and traditions among magistrates and judges in different jurisdictions; 34. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Prisoners in Australia 2007, (2008) 4517 at p 18. 35. See, P Gallagher, ‘Why does NSW have a higher imprisonment rate than Victoria?’ Crime and Justice Bulletin No 23 May 1995 NSWBOCSAR: Sydney. 36. A Freiberg and S Ross, Sentencing Reform and Penal Change (1999) 61. 37. J Walker, ‘Keeping People Out of Prison – Which Jurisdictions Do It Best?’ in S McKillop (ed) Keeping People out of Prison (1991) AIC: Canberra; available at www.aic.gov.au/publications/proceedings/11/walker.html how imprisonment Rates Vary 7
the level of provision of rehabilitative programs, literacy, education, work skills, psychological, psychiatric, drug and alcohol programs in the prison context; > the provision of remissions and parole; > the level of provision of post-release services such as housing, education, employment and training assistance, drug and alcohol and other programs; > the portrayal of crime problems in the media; > the degree to which criminal justice issues have become politicised and the subject of ‘law and order ‘auctions’ between political parties, especially in the lead up to elections; 38 > public attitudes and sensibilities towards crime, offenders and rehabilitation. HigH indigenOus imprisOnmenT rATes The marked over-representation of Indigenous Australians is one of the distinguishing features of Australian imprisonment. On 30 June 2007 Indigenous prisoners made up 24% or one in four of all Australian prisoners. Nationally, Indigenous persons were 13 times more likely to be in prison than non-Indigenous persons and in WA, 21 times more likely. The national imprisonment rate per 100 000 Indigenous adults in 2006-07 was 2142.2 compared with a rate of 122.4 for non-Indigenous prisoners Prisoners/100 000 adults 4 000 3 500 Indigenous prisoners 3 000 Non-Indigenous prisoners 2 500 2 000 1 500 1 000 500 0 NSW VIC QLD WA SA TAS ACT NT AUST Source: Report on Government Services 2008. © Commonwealth of Australia. The disproportion is also steadily increasing. Indigenous prisoners comprised around 5% of the New South Wales (NSW) prison population in the early 1980s, but four times that proportion (20%) by 2007. 39 Nationally the proportion of Indigenous prisoners increased from 18% in 1996 to 24.4% in 2006. 40 With a national Indigenous imprisonment rate of 2142.2 per 100,000 Indigenous adults in 2006-07 compared with 122.4 for non-Indigenous prisoners the question arises whether the imprisonment of Indigenous people in Australia has taken on the characteristics of ‘mass imprisonment’ (as discussed in relation to the US on p 9). The ‘normalisation’ of the prison for Indigenous communities can be seen in the fact that 20% of Indigenous children in Australia have a parent or carer in prison, raising the prospect of increasing inter-generational transmission of prison culture and experience. 41 The higher incarceration rates of jurisdictions like the Northern Territory and Western Australia may be due to having more punitive ‘frontier’ cultures in which disputes over colonial dispossession of Indigenous people are both more visible and continuing. 42 Also, high Indigenous incarceration rates in the last quarter of the 20th century coincide with the end of predominantly administrative forms of segregation and control through the mission system, the granting of citizenship and entry into the labour market. 43 The following quote makes a similar point about the climb in Indigenous incarceration rates and the issue of deaths in custody: By removing the majority of indigenous people from the spheres of everyday life and establishing a separate criminal justice apparatus to regulate their lives in isolation, the reserve system actually postponed the inevitable passage of large numbers of the dispossessed victims of colonisation into the state penal systems … Moreover, the incapacitating effects of the reserve system itself – its destruction of cultural traditions and independence, and the erosion of health and wellbeing – without doubt exacerbated the post protection process of incarceration. 44 Child ‘separation’ policies (more commonly known as the ‘stolen generation’) as revealed in the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) report, Bringing them home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (1997) also had clearly criminogenic (crime producing) effects. Removal from the family and institutionalisation in juvenile homes cut Indigenous children off from the protection and influence of their families and communities and socialised them into the often brutal regimes of institutional life. This process generated institutional careers, juvenile homes proving to be training grounds for prison. 38. See R Hogg and D Brown, Rethinking Law and Order (1998) Pluto Press: Sydney. 39. ABS Prisoners in Australia 2007 (2008) 40. 40. As above, at p 43. 41. M Levy, Presentation to National Criminal Justice Forum, Canberra, September 29 2008. 42. As suggested by R Broadhurst, in Aborigines and Crime in Australia’ (1997) in M Tonry (ed) Ethnicity, crime and immigration: Comparative and cross-national perspectives on crime and justice –a review of research, Volume 21 Chicago, Univ of Chicago Press 453-64. 43. R Hogg, ‘Regulating Indigenous Peoples in Australia’ (2001) Punishment and Society 3(3) 355-379. 44. M Finnane and J McGuire, ‘The uses of punishment and exile: Aborigines in colonial Australia’ (2001) Punishment and Society 3(2) 279-298 at 294. 8 HOT TOPICS 67 > Prisoners
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