Tough guys?
by Noel Towell
South
Australia’s Rann government has yet to back away from a fight to prove its
law and order credentials. The state administration has scrapped with former
Director of Public Prosecutions Paul Rofe to ensure that offenders are
locked up and tussled with Parole Board Chair Frances Nelson to keep them
locked down. Premier Rann and Attorney General Michael Atkinson have taken
on bikies, bouncers, street brawlers and house breakers in their efforts to
get tough with the bad guys and put victims first.The 2003 Attorney General's Department annual report says that legislative reform has “strengthened law and order, including the areas of sentencing, bikie gangs, carrying of knives, home invasions, penalty provisions for bushfire arsonists and improved treatment for victims of crime.”
The ‘get tough’ approach has certainly earned Labor some political capital but has won few friends in the senior ranks of the legal profession, where Rann’s drive to bring justice and sentencing into line with community expectations is seen as political interference with the judicial process.
Following Rofe’s resignation, the Premier added another dramatic flourish by announcing that the ideal new DPP would be in the mould of Eliot Ness, the legendary US revenue agent who ended gangster Al Capone’s reign of terror over 1930s Chicago. Rann told The Advertiser that the concept of such a prosecutor might be “abhorrent” to some senior people in the Law Society “but fortunately, they won’t be choosing the next DPP”.
UniSA Associate Professor Rick Sarre, who has written extensively on justice issues, believes that the chase for votes is clouding the issue. “Law and order is seen as an election winner after Bob Carr’s Labor Party won three elections in New South Wales with a tough-on-crime stance,” he says.
Prof Sarre believes that this race to get tougher than the opposition leads to a lack of meaningful political dialogue. “In relation to law and order, there’s never any real debate,” he says. “If the government says that ‘we’re going to get tough on knives’, then the opposition says, ‘we’ll get tougher’. The debate only moves in one direction.”
Nor is Prof Sarre convinced that the public is always in favour of longer sentences: “Overseas studies reinforce the view that, when the public has all the facts of the case available to it, and when they are aware of the sentencing options available, they usually agree with the judge’s decision.”
Tough policy talk and action is not always translated into safer communities according to Prof Sarre. “While [Attorney General] Michael Atkinson was talking up longer sentences and bigger jails, he cut the crime prevention budget,” he says. “With the money that’s to be spent on a new jail, thousands of people could be put through a drug rehabilitation program.”
Most crime is committed by repeat offenders. According to the Department for Correctional Services, more than 45 per cent of ex-prisoners are back before the courts within two years of their release. Researchers have long argued that a reduction in recidivism rates could go a long way toward a safer community.
UniSA psychology researcher Karen Heseltine believes that offender rehabilitation is a key crime prevention strategy.
“A growing body of literature shows that offender rehabilitation can work but we need to be selective about the methods that we use and to target treatment programs that have proven to be effective,” she says.
Heseltine stresses that the long term benefits of rehabilitation are worth the effort. “Studies have shown that that the benefits, both financial and emotional, in a reduction in crime far outweigh the costs of offender rehabilitation.”
In early May, correctional services minister Terry Roberts announced that an offender rehabilitation program worth $1.5m annually over four years which aims to tackle re-offending rates among violent sexual offenders is soon to be implemented. Some of the money has been earmarked to address recidivism among indigenous prisoners, grossly over–represented in our jails.
Victim Support Service CEO Mike Dawson is a supporter of such moves and believes that the state has been moving in the right direction in services for victims of crime. “Progress has been made each year for the past seven years in terms of recognising their rights in legislation, money spent and services provided for victims of crime,” he says.
But, Dawson says, there is a long way to go and services for the victims of crime are still inadequate. “We believe that there should be better and more information for victims from diverse and Aboriginal communities,” he says. “We need improved guidelines for victim input in negotiating charges and pleas, permanent funding for victims of crime in rural areas, a reduction of unnecessary delays in court proceedings, more restorative justice options and improvement in vulnerable witness protection.”Last but not least Dawson calls for, “less sensational and more victim-sensitive reporting of crime by the media.”
“There are few votes in offender rehabilitation and methadone treatment doesn’t sell well on talkback radio,” he says. “But there are growing calls from experts for a more balanced approach to justice in South Australia. The search for that balance could be the next challenge in Rann and Atkinson’s war on crime.”