PRISON: LAST RESORT OR FIRST OPTION?

The Australian prison population has increased by nearly 50 per cent over the past ten years (ABS 2003). More alarming is the reported 110 per cent increase in the female prisoner population, the 8 per cent increase in the unsentenced prison population, and the 5 per cent increase in the Indigenous prisoner population over the same period.

“The advice to me is we have still got 500 cells empty. I don’t mind if we fill them up, and if we fill them up and have to build another jail, we’ll build another jail” (Premier Nathan Rees).

“As a Labor party activist in the inner city, and a branch secretary for more than 20 years, if this State Government goes any further down the track of privatisation of prisons, I could not in good conscience vote Labor in 2012 – and it hurts me to say that” (Trevor Davies, Co-Convenor, Social Justice Task Group, Sydney Presbytery of the Uniting Church). 

“It’s all too easy to treat people in poverty or with mental health and addiction problems as criminals, but what does it achieve? It’s time to admit the high cost, in human and financial terms, of the failed policies of successive State governments, and to rethink our approach to criminal corrections” (Rev. Andrew Collis, Managing Editor, The South Sydney Herald).

Presented by the South Sydney Herald  & the Social Justice Task Group of the Sydney Presbytery of the Uniting Church in Australia.