Who Cares For or About Those in Gaol?

It is a pretty simple proposition - people in custody are owed a duty of care by the Government.

That has not stopped the AdelaideNow website from whipping up a story about compensation paid to prisoners injured in custody.

AdelaideNow... $230,000 paid to injured criminals

In fairness to Michael Owen, his article is quite balanced, but a different flavour is placed on it by the headline using the word "criminals" when the article is about "prisoners." Given the very high remand rates in South Australia, many of our "prisoners" have not been convicted of any charges they may face!

As can be seen in the readers' comments, this has planted the idea that somehow criminal offenders receive compensation for their crimes.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky said: "The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by entering its prisons." Winston Churchill said that a society's attitude to its prisoners, its "criminals", is the measure of "the stored up strength of a nation".

I wonder what those men would have thought of these comments?

The point of Gaol

We often read or see reports about Court cases where people are complaining that an offender should have received a longer gaol term, or should not have had the term suspended.

So often, what is not asked is the simple question: "Why?"

If the State is going to keep people in gaol, there needs to be a reason. It must be done to achieve a purpose for society.

It is often said that penalties need to be increased to reduce the incidence of crime. In fact, there is little evidence that increased penalties for crimes reduce their frequency. People in Britain still used to steal when the penalty was transportation to Australia - and that was long before this country was the destination of choice for British migrants!

Countries with much lower penalties for many crimes often have no greater crime rate than those with much higher penalties.

One often misquoted example is Singapore. Here in Australia there seems to be a view that penalties there are harsher, but that it not the case for many serious crimes. Assault for example has a maximum penalty of three months in Singapore, but in South Australia it is 2 years, or 3 years if aggravated, or 4 years if a weapon is used. And that is for assaults that cause no harm - if harm is caused, then the penalties go up even further.

Whether there is any benefit in putting someone in gaol has been the subject of some work in Britain:

Jail is no place for the average prisoner - Times Online

Louis Blom-Cooper, an icon in his own right at the Bar, has chosen to place his latest book. Launched last week, its central thesis is that 60 per cent of the prison population should not be there. The QC describes imprisonment as "an instrument of man's control over his fellow creatures" which has existed since historical records began. Its role as the "State's prime weapon of penal sanction for serious crime", is, he argues, more recent.

So why do we keep doing it? Increased penalties have done nothing to stop the so-called "Gang of 49."

All it seems to lead to is a higher crime rate, lack of rehabilitation, and an increasing cost to the Government of keeping people there.

DNA Evidence

We are all familiar with the use of DNA evidence in Criminal cases, and it is becoming quite common.

In Dallas County, Texas, however, there have now been 17 prisoners cleared by the use of DNA evidence to look at historical convictions. They include James Woodard, who has spent 27 years in gaol after prosecutors in his case withheld evidence from the defence.

You can read more about it here at CNN.

The part of the story that really disturbed me was the suggestion that it seems to have been a regular thing for evidence to be withheld by prosecutors, and that they would resist moves to prosecute them for it! There is a whole world of difference between an honest mistake, and a deliberate withholding of evidence.

It is interesting that this also comes at a time when the UK is looking at using prosecutors who are employed, rather than members of the independant Bar, and is one of the reasons given in favour of retaining the current system. Read more in this article at The Times online

Here in South Australia, trials are usually prosecuted by employees of the Director of Public Prosecutions, with some being briefed to Barristers, depending on workload. Perhaps because the profession here is fairly small, it does not seem to be a problem - any prosecutor who withheld evidence would soon lose all credibility in the profession.

What do you think we need to safeguard this?

An Anniversary To Be Ashamed Of

February 2008 marked the first anniversary of the use of the City Watch House to hold remand prisoners.

The fact that there has been so little outcry about this is a sad reflection on our society.

No matter how much people might want the guilty to be punished, this is about the way we treat the innocent.

To our eternal shame. And the minister admits this may continue for several years.

When a person is first remanded in custody is precisely the time they need contact with loved ones the most, and yet there are no family visits allowed. No proper access to exercise or to education. Correctional services has even had to resort to handing out nicotine patches.

The details are covered in the 2007 Correctional Services Annual Report (2.3Mb pdf).

With the new gaols not due until 2011, and a Government that seems intent on imprisoning more people and for longer periods, something will need to be done soon.

Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

A couple of sentencing decisions in the news recently have attracted a lot of public attention. Many people are calling for longer sentences in general, and for mandatory minimum sentences. Very few of these people are actually able to articulate why they would be a positive.

At the time of writing, 89% of people responding to the AdelaideNow Poll support mandatory sentences for Aggravated Cause Death by Dangerous Driving cases. The comments on the story in question follow similar themes - a couple are reproduced verbatim here:

"Crime i sgetting worse and worse and yet these criminals are getting such pathetic sentences"

"lock these criminals up for a lengthy term, show them we will not tolerate it anymore, before things get even worse."

Many of them talk about the fact that the victim was a "good" man - and there is absolutely no doubt that he was, but is that something that should play a role in sentencing? Maybe that is a whole topic in itself.

I want the Government to work at reducing crime.

Increased penalties only serve to appease a public baying for blood. They do not reduce crime. The penalty for stealing used to be transportation to Australia, and it did not stop crime - and that is long before Australia was the migration destination of choice for Brits!

I am told Denis Hood is a reasonably intelligent man, and therefore one would assume that he has read all of the research on the topic of "general deterrence." If he has, then the only motive for this must be political.

That's not putting the Family First.

"Rehabilitation has failed," they cry

With the media reporting a number of very nasty crimes over the last week, there are increasingly vocal advocates of harsher penalties, so called "three strikes" policies, and dumping any focus on rehabilitation.

You only need to follow the comments on AdelaideNow, run by "The Advertiser," to see the depth of the feelings this issue is producing.

Those who claim that rehabilitation has failed ignore the fact that rehabilitation has never really been tried in a properly funded way. They also ignore the fact that harsh punishments have been tried for centuries and have failed. Hanging did not prevent murders, and people still stole loaves of bread in England when the penalty was transportation to Australia!

Those who would like to see the "Gang of 49" locked up need to think about this; at $65,000 per prisoner, per annum, locking up 49 people will cost us - the taxpayers of SA - nearly $3.2 million EVERY YEAR, for as long as we keep them locked up.

As an added problem, little rehabilitation occurs in gaol, so those people are still likely to offend when released.

Rehabilitation is not about a bag of lollies and a pat on the head, it is about fixing the problems that lead people to offend.

Who watches the Watch-house?

We have such a problem with overcrowding in prisons, that remand prisoners are now being held in the City Watch-house. This is a facility designed to hold people only for short terms, following their arrest, and until they go to Court.

People held there do not get family visits, and often the time they need them most is when they are first remanded in custody. For a while, it was even difficult for them to get a visit with a lawyer, but that problem seems to have been fixed after I contacted the Minister for Correctional Services, Carmel Zollo, and her staff fixed the problem fairly quickly.

A number of my clients have described their feelings of isolation and helplessness, while held here. The continued imprisonment of the innocent in these harsh conditions must stop.

Prison Overcrowding

One of the results of the current government's view that "Tough on Crime" is the same thing as "Longer Prison Sentences," and the higher rates of remands in custody in South Australia is the overcrowding of our prisons.

One of my sources at Yatala Labour Prison has told me that 60% of the inmates there are on remand. Most people think that the Adelaide Remand Centre is where all remand prisoners are housed, and that the high security Yatala is only for sentenced prisoners. This means that remand prisoners are in the same prison as some of the State's most hardened criminals, no doubt learning all the wrong lessons!

With moves to change the law to make it harder for many accused to get bail, this situation is only set to get worse.

We might even get to a situation like the UK, where the government has asked the Judges to consider only sending the worst offenders to prison.