The real cost of fireworks.

Most people know that white Australia was founded as a British penal colony in the late eighteenth century. What is not widely known is that of those transported, well over three-quarters were convicted of only petty crimes (and some of those ‘petty crimes’ now do seem very petty indeed — stealing of food, stealing of clothing etc). Less than five per cent of offences involved either a threat of, or actual violence, to a person. Transported prisoners included a small but significant minority of political prisoners, and a large minority of juvenile offenders (the youngest transported offender was a 13 yo).

One would think that with this early history of the consequences of a weaponized class and property-obsessed British legal system, Australia would have been keen to try new strategies,  motivated to develop a world-leading judicial system, with evidence-based decisions, and on a foundation of reason and fairness, build a commitment to positive early intervention (before offending, conviction or incarceration) that not only truly addresses the reasons for offending and offender circumstances, but which leads to a more peaceful and more productive society, of incontrovertible benefit to every Australian.  There is a vanishingly small percentage of offenders who are, and will always be, a threat, and must be locked up, at least until there is a successful treatment, and of no consolation to the victims of those offenders is the fact that acknowledgement of that is always after the fact, that there is no early positive intervention to identify and treat.

Unfortunately it is not the case that Australia has in any way a world-leading judicial system: it fails the victims, the offenders, and Australian society at large.  Despite the fact that there are some countries with half the crime or recidivist rates as Australia, with the arrogance of stupidity we refuse to even discuss what we might learn. It is a conscious decision by the political class to be so ignorant, and they are plainly deserving of blame for that.

On Boxing Day in Brisbane, an attempted home invasion by two juveniles caused the death of a woman, who was stabbed to death, and her husband was stabbed and injured.  Two young children are now left without a mother, and those children will feel that heart-breaking loss for the rest of their lives. Home invasion is not a common occurrence, and deaths during home invasion even rarer (which is definitely not to trivialize it. It is an issue, and it needs to be properly addressed). There were loud community calls for the government to do something (reiterated by conservative commentators and a rabid Police Union). What was the response of the Queensland government?

The Queensland government immediately doubled the maximum penalties for some offences committed by juveniles, foreshadowed mandatory sentence minimums and automatic refusal of bail, and committed to building another youth jail (Queensland already has the most juveniles in prison of any Australian state). “Tough on crime” you see. But will those changes work? Will those changes reduce the incidence of violent juvenile offending?

Expert advice, backed by evidence, says no (and I must say, because the information is neither hard to obtain nor difficult to understand, the Queensland government are being incredibly cynical, in fact they are behaving reprehensibly, purporting to present as a solution something that they know (or should know) will not work). Qld Premier Palaszczuk said the “fundamental principle” of youth justice needed to be protecting the community. No, the ‘fundamental principle’ should be early positive intervention and addressing the issues that cause the offending, then not only will the community be protected, but those now profoundly affected by the debilitating consequences of criminality might never have known it. 

Expert advice, such as here. And here

 

“Tough on crime” you see. “Tough on drugs” almost worked, kind of, well could have. It could have worked if drugs weren’t actually a health issue.

Keith Hamburger,  Queensland’s first Director-General of Corrective Services said:

The prison population of Queensland is composed of 31% of First Nations people. These make up only 4.6% of the population so they are grossly over-represented. Typically, about 40% of prisoners are functionally illiterate, many are or have been homeless, and many live below the poverty line. We have a lot of people with substance abuse problems; about 15% of prisoners suffer some degree of mental impairment, and these days we have a lot of people with mental health problems, or with traumatic domestic violence or abused and neglected childhoods, so prison today is a repository for a lot of people with severe mental trauma. These are the people we are dealing with.

 

Does harsher prison sentences address these or any other pertinent issues? Why then would harsher penalties work? What is the real cost of 10 tonnes of fireworks on New Year’s Eve? As the milling crowds gather on the foreshore, like cattle around the grain troughs in a feedlot, they are excited, but know not why the world around them is as it is.