Corrections and Crime Prevention

This chapter explores the dramatic rise in prisoner numbers over the last four decades in Australia and determines that that rise is having a counter-productive effectCounter-productive effects on crime prevention notwithstanding its short-term incapacitative effect. It sets out the findings of the Productivity CommissionProductivity Commission in 2021 that highlighted the opportunity costsOpportunity costs associated with imprisonment. It explains the ‘restorative’ justice mechanisms that are available to judges and magistrates today as alternatives to custodial options. It mentions the evidence that citizens are not opposed to alternatives to prisonPrisons (such as communityCommunity development service and probationProbation) in circumstances where there is little risk to public safety. It highlights the deleterious effects of imprisonment on society generally (beyond the massive financial cost) and the shameful over-representationOver-representation of First Nations men and women in custody, highlighted most recently in the work of the Justice Reform Initiative, a national campaign with bipartisan support. The chapter concludes with the rejection of any notion that ‘nothing works’ in rehabilitationRehabilitation.