Page 921 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
This finding should not actually come as a great surprise to those who have an interest in crime reduction strategies. The Justice and Community Safety Directorate guide to framing offences offers a very similar statement. It says:
Despite popular perception, research suggests that increasing penalties does not act as a significant deterrent or prevent crime. Strategies that look at reducing the incidence of the crime (such as targeted education and awareness raising) and improving detection, arrest and prosecution of offenders are generally more effective.
So what the 12-year study from New South Wales does is completely support the existing statement from JACS and really puts a wealth of evidence there to support it.
I would like to turn now from the evidence to exactly why it is important for the ACT to make use of this information, this research, to tackle crime. Put simply, the evidence allows us here in the Assembly to deliver more results and less rhetoric. The rhetoric about tackling crime is old and well worn. Often politicians will promise to increase sentences in order to “crack down on crime” or “send a clear message that we do not tolerate crime in this city”. These statements are tried and tested and they deliver a good headline. But what the evidence shows is that they deliver little, if any, actual results.
The ACT has been relatively immune from simplistic law and order campaigns. But we need to be very vigilant; we need to be on the lookout, because, as the evidence shows, if we turn to simplistic slogans we will fail to deliver results. They actually do nothing more than make an empty promise to the community. At times they can represent a wasted opportunity to actually do something that will have an impact.
Instead, we should be focusing on what will work. As the evidence shows, setting higher sentences and promising to lock offenders up for longer and longer does nothing to address crime. Governments and politicians will deliver more results if they look at strategies to reduce poverty and tackle income inequality. The evidence from New South Wales is that a 10 per cent increase in household income cuts crime by about 14 to 18 per cent.
We should also be considering any strategies that can increase the risk of arrest. A 10 per cent increase in risk of arrest cuts crime by between one and three per cent. What these strategies look like on the ground will differ from crime type to crime type. They may, however, involve considering ways to better detect and investigate crime. They can involve more targeted policing of problem areas and for certain crime types. They can also extend to increasing police presence on the ground and in response to crime if it can be shown that police are overworked.
What an evidence-based approach to crime does not look like is simply copying the maximum sentences from other jurisdictions’ legislation. The risk of that is that you unquestioningly repeat the errors of a simplistic law and order campaign from a previous election interstate. There are real dangers in blindly copying that kind of approach.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video