WHAT IS JUSTICE REINVESTMENT?

WHY IS JUSTICE REINVESTMENT NEEDED IN SA?

The continued growth of SA’s prison population is both economically and socially unsustainable. Over the past decade, South Australia’s prison population has grown by 50% and we now spend over $150 million a year keeping people in prison.

Tens of millions more are spent each year adding more and more prison beds. Yet prisons don’t break the cycle of crime.

The best way to deal with crime is to prevent it. When people, and particularly young people, offend there are often other issues at play like homelessness, cognitive disability, drug and alcohol use, poverty, family breakdown, discrimination and normalisation of violence. The more we spend on prisons, the less we have to spend on other essential services such as health and education. If we care about breaking the cycle of crime and inter-generational poverty, we need to reduce imprisonment rates.

Justice reinvestment will benefit whole communities but JRSA believes a special focus must be given to reducing the shameful over-representation of Aboriginal people in our prisons. Aboriginal young people in South Australia are 23 times more likely to be placed in detention that non-Aboriginal young people and the trend is getting worse. Today’s young offenders are often tomorrow’s adult prisoners. If this over-representation is not addressed, South Australia risks losing another generation of Aboriginal Australians to the criminal justice system.

WILL JUSTICE REINVESTMENT WORK?

Justice reinvestment was first implemented in the United States more than a decade ago and has achieved real results in terms of reducing imprisonment rates and dollars saved.

In 2007, Texas officials estimated they would need to spend $2 billion over 5 years on new prisons. Instead, they invested $241 million in alternatives such as treatment programs, improved probation and parole services and nurse-family partnerships generating savings of $444 million in just one year. 10 years on, crime rates continue to drop dramatically and growth in the prison population has substantially slowed.

There is alot to learn from the US experience. However there are also unique structural, policy and community-based factors to consider in the Australian context.

WHAT JUSTICE REINVESTMENT IS NOT

Justice reinvestment is not about getting rid of prisons altogether. Prisons will always be needed to house serious and dangerous offenders. Nor is it about stripping money away from already underfunded prison services and programs. In the US, additional monies have often been shifted to fund both community and in-prison mental health and substance abuse services. And importantly, justice reinvestment is a not a short-term, one size fits all, top-down approach. It requires a collaborative partnership between government and community. Communities chosen for justice reinvestment must be supported to play a central role in the design, implementation and monitoring of local justice reinvestment plans.

JUSTICE REINVESTMENT SA (JRSA)

Justice Reinvestment SA (JRSA) calls on all South Australian parliamentarians to acknowledge that high imprisonment rates are not a prerequisite for public safety and instead commit to adopting evidence-based criminal justice policies which are more likely to improve public safety over the long-term.

JRSA is calling on the South Australian Government to provide a minimum of 5 years support to at least one metropolitan and one regional community to implement a justice reinvestment trial. These projects should by established in partnership with the local Aboriginal community and driven and monitored on the basis of representative Aboriginal community leadership and governance, based on priorities and opportunities identified by the community itself.

JRSA believes that focusing on Aboriginal young people is just the first step towards rolling out a comprehensive justice reinvestment policy across the State.

JUSTICE REINVESTMENT NETWORK AUSTRALIA (JRNA)

Justice Reinvestment Network Australia (JRNA) is a growing community of Australia-wide researchers, Aboriginal community leaders, policy-makers, government and non-government representatives who are looking at alternatives to incarceration, with a particular focus on the needs and priorities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

Australian interest in justice reinvestment began with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner’s 2009 Social Justice Report which specifically explored the potential for justice reinvestment in Indigenous communities. Also in 2009, the Commonwealth Legal and Constitutional Affairs Reference Committee in its inquiry, Access to Justice, recommended a pilot of justice reinvestment strategies focusing on regional and remote Indigenous communities.

In 2010, the Australian Greens adopted justice reinvestment as part of their justice policy platform. In 2011 the Commonwealth House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs lent its support to justice reinvestment in its report on the over-incarceration of Indigenous young people, Doing Time – Time for Doing (HRSC, 2011). Doing Time’s recommendation that further research be conducted to investigate the potential for justice reinvestment in Australia (Rec. 40) was accepted by the Federal Government, and the National Justice CEOs established a Working Group to develop options for working towards justice reinvestment in Australia.

In 2012 the ALP Federal government, with the support of the Greens, initiated a Senate inquiry into the Value of Justice Reinvestment Approach to Criminal Justice in Australia. The Inquiry was chaired by Western Australian Greens Senator, Penny Wright.

The Inquiry, drawing on 131 submissions, favoured the adoption of justice reinvestment in Australia and recommended that the Commonwealth Government play a leadership role in establishing and funding a trial and collecting and sharing data. The Inquiry emphasised that any trial should include at least one remote Indigenous community. Following a change of Federal government in 2013, these recommendations have not been progressed.

The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples launched their justice policy in 2013, which referred to a high level of support among Congress members for justice reinvestment trials. The policy singled out pre-trial remand as an opportunity for justice reinvestment “because of the immediate cost savings to the justice system of reducing the remand population”. National Congress in The Redfern Statement (2016) called on the Federal Government to commit to ‘community controlled justice reinvestment initiatives that can allow Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander led solutions to dramatically turn around justice outcomes’.