Page 4357 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 1993
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Based on experience interstate and overseas, the Brisbane police force's community policing branch set up a scheme where:
Known and suspected graffiti artists do their art on legal, approved walls with legally obtained paint, so that this youth will be able to "do their own thing" in a controlled environment, where members of responsible agencies would be present during the formation, preparation and execution of their artwork.
That is from page 11 of Legal Street Art. The stated main objective of the project was to:
develop the Legal Street Art Program to such an extent that youth involved in illegal graffiti and the associated subculture would prefer to participate in organised, legal, controlled activities.
The evaluation report for the project shows that the enthusiasm of young people was extraordinary. Six youths were invited to participate in painting a legal wall in Petrie in suburban Brisbane; 62 young people turned up. The project had 810 young people participate over its short operating life, with 195 young people officially registered as artists with the legal street art project.
The statistics on recidivism and offences are nothing short of astounding. Offences against Queensland Rail decreased by 411 incidents over a nine-month period. This was a 22.7 per cent decrease. Considering that graffiti is only one of the plethora of activities that are classified as vandalism or wilful damage, this is a good result. Recidivism among registered graffiti artists for graffiti offences was 3.58 per cent; that is, of all the participants who had been charged with graffiti offences prior to participating in the project, less than 4 per cent returned to participating in illegal graffiti offences.
The project coordinator cites a cost of $32 per half-metre to clean graffiti from trains in 1991, while in the same year Marrickville Council in Sydney spent $42,000 on graffiti removal. Marrickville ran its own legal art program, using its council ovals, site caravans and other prominent walls in the municipality for works by street artists. The program was very successful, and at least one neighbouring council proposed a joint project along the same lines. I have no information on the current costs of cleaning graffiti from assets in Canberra, but I can only surmise from information given by the Minister in response to earlier questions about the removal of graffiti from public places that it is a cost burden on the ACT taxpayer.
There is also the question of the effectiveness of the current ways of dealing with graffiti crimes. In the ACT these come under the Crimes Act and are classified as criminal damage. In the Brisbane area the clear-up rate for graffiti offences is 14.9 per cent, and that does not include Queensland Rail. The report's author states that the success rate of clear-ups would be "significantly reduced" if Queensland Rail figures were included.
Members may well ask, Madam Speaker, "How does this apply in the nation's capital?". Young people in Canberra have a lot in common with young people in Brisbane. In fact, two of the leading lights of the graffiti subculture in Brisbane are ex-Canberrans. Bill and Jamie Moulton, who lived in Canberra before moving to Brisbane, were graffiti "bombers" before they were caught.
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