Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4404 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

In fact, when you look at it in that way, you will see that our corrections system reaches out into many other aspects of our community, if not all aspects. It is important when we are looking at the issue of offenders and how we deal with them that we look first and foremost at the human element, not at the bricks and mortar, not at the razor wire, not at the height of walls and the electronic surveillance and so on. Look at the people and what their needs are and how they can best benefit.

When you do look at our prison populations it is a frightening sight, in my view. It is frightening to recognise how young these people are. The vast majority of them are under 25 years. It is frightening to realise that the vast majority of them are boys and young men. What is happening to those people? What puts them down this path of offending? We see many young people, especially young men, exhibiting some fairly antisocial behaviour during their late adolescence and early adulthood. We see drunkenness. We see a tendency to aggression and so on. We see some very careless driving. We see some suicidal and murderous driving. In the case of a small number of our young men we see criminal activity. I think we have to bear in mind that these are young members of our society who, perhaps, in many cases, are more in need of care than they are of punishment.

Mr Speaker, it is also frightening to realise that, if you were to take out of our prisons everybody with an intellectual disability, everybody with a mental illness of some kind, and everybody with a drug habit, you would have precious few people left. You would have Anita Cobby's killers, you would have Ivan Milat, you would have Martin Bryant, and you would have a few others of that ilk; but not many of the thousands and thousands of people who are in prison would you keep. I think that is a bit of an indictment of our corrections system. I think it is certainly indicative that we have not dealt well with people who are not coping in our community, and I think it overwhelmingly calls for a change in attitude. It calls for a community to take care of its own offenders and to recognise that this is not a black-and-white issue of "Someone broke the law, so they go to gaol". This is a very multifaceted issue of people, often with multiple disadvantages, ending up on the wrong side of the law. I believe that we have to accept responsibility for those issues as a community, and we have to accept responsibility also for the rehabilitation and the reintegration of those people back into our community.

Mr Speaker, as we send people to the prisons in the New South Wales system at the moment, we expose them to even further disadvantage. In the first place, they are removed from their families and friends - the very people who could set them on the straight and narrow path, perhaps, the very people who could help them through a difficult time. They are hundreds of miles from them. The impact is also on those families and friends. They are deprived of a member they probably love. They want to see them. They want to help them. They cannot get to see them. They have no daily contact with them. The funds that go to the Prisoners Aid Society, who do a wonderful job, are simply not adequate to ensure that the contact between family members or between peers is what we would require. Often a good friend is the very person who can turn your mind around when you are 18 or 22 - not your mother.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .