Australian Institute of Criminology’s Australian Prison Trends is a depressing publication. It shows an increasing imprisonment rate in Australia over the past two decades, and an even more pronounced increase in the early 1990s. Even more depressing is the fact that more than half of imprisonments were because people failed to pay fines, many of them traffic fines. It shows there is one law for the rich and another for the poor.
In 1976 the imprisonment rate was 90.9 people per 100,000. By 1992 it had risen to 108.8 per 100,000. And the rate of female imprisonment has gone up, too.
Precisely what these figures show is open to interpretation. It could be simplistically argued that there is more crime, therefore more imprisonment is needed. It could be equally argued that the recession means fewer people can pay fines therefore more imprisonment is needed.
Conversely, it could be argued that, rather than deterring crime, imprisonment does exactly the opposite. It causes the crime rate to rise because imprisoned people learn criminal habits from fellow inmates and because they get alienated and resentful and therefore less likely to respect the person and property of others.
Economically, of course, it makes no sense to imprison people if it can possibly be avoided. It costs about $50,000 a year to imprison someone. It is far better to avoid that cost and for society to reap the benefits of someone working, if that is achievable.
The institute’s report points to an inappropriate political, rather than practical, approach to imprisonment in Australia. NSW has twice the imprisonment rate as Victoria, yet the same crime rate.
One of the authors of the report, John Walker, said the figures showed “”a great deal of inertia in the legal and political systems”. It may in fact be worse than that. The political system may be actively working against sensible imprisonment policies because politicians have a fear of being branded soft on crime. They pander to those in the electorate who see locking people up as the only solution. They are unwilling or unable to argue that the “”lock ’em up” mentality is ultimately more costly for society.
At present there seems to be few alternatives than prison for those convicted of violence. However, there are or should be alternatives for fine defaulters. Garnisheeing social security payments and wages and a more appropriate fining system is the first place would be good first steps. At present, traffic fines are applied on a formula with no account of income. Thus one driver might pay 1 per cent of annual salary for the same offence that another driver will be paying 5 per cent of annual salary. Moreover, the rich driver paying 1 per cent would be required to forsake champagne and caviar for a month while the other goes without shoes. The system having imposed a higher real penalty on the second driver then proceeds to further drastic penalties if the first penalty is not paid. The result is anger, alienation and sometimes a spiral into worse crime.
It is not a question of going soft on crime. It is a question of fairness. And it is a question of a more imaginative approach to dealing with crime. In the past two decades, it would appear we have been spending more money and effort after the event with measures that are manifestly not working.