RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: OZschwitz gulag: Counting the cost of wrong emphasis in crime reduction  Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:55 am | |
| The obvious answer to crime is apparent to most people and certainly to talk-back hosts who have so much to say on the subject: get tough. Stop pussy-footing around. Show the offenders we mean business. Increase penalties. Jail more perpetrators. Zero tolerance.
I find it suspicious that we show such remarkably little interest in checking to see how well the crackdown is working. If you are interested, it is working - though not for the reason we expected and not to the extent we had hoped. It's also costing taxpayers a fortune and has reached the point where increased spending isn't doing any more good.
The media and its customers gain so much entertainment from carrying on about how terrible crime is that much of what follows may come as a surprise to you. It comes from a paper written last year by Dr Don Weatherburn, director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Sometime in the 1970s a marked increase in crime began. Between 1978 and 1988, the recorded rate of robbery doubled, the rate of home burglary doubled, the fraud rate rose by 185 per cent, the rate of car theft rose by 70 per cent and the rate of general theft rose by 55 per cent.
This seems to have been caused by the rise in drug-taking, particularly heroin use and heroin-related crime. Similar problems arose in the United States and other developed countries, and there may also have been a link with the rising unemployment caused by the recessions of the time. By 1983, nearly one Australian household in 10 had been victim to some form of household property crime in the previous year. Crime had moved out of the poor, working-class suburbs and was now affecting middle-class suburbs.
Not surprisingly, it was about this time the public became more concerned about crime and the media began reflecting, and thereby magnifying, this concern. Not long after, the politicians began responding to popular pressure for "something to be done".
If you gain your information only from the more excitable parts of the media, you could be forgiven for believing the treatment of offenders is as lax as it ever was. That is because the media highlight individual cases of seeming laxity, ignoring the more general picture.
In fact, a host of get-tough policies have been introduced around the country: abolition of prison remissions, introduction of "three strikes" sentencing legislation, creation of mandatory minimum penalties, introduction of more restrictive parole laws, introduction of "life means for life", introduction of electronic monitoring of offenders and, most recently, progressive toughening of bail laws.
The effect was a rapid increase in the rate of imprisonment. Between 1985 and 1995, the Australian prison population grew three times faster than the adult population. Some of this increase came from rising crime but most came from changed policy. The abolition of remissions produced an immediate surge in the rate of imprisonment. The courts responded to public opinion by increasing the proportion of convicted offenders sent to jail. Though it's rarely acknowledged, more people in jail means more cost to taxpayers. Over the decade to 1994-95, national spending on corrective services almost doubled to $880 million a year, even after allowing for inflation. That is real growth of more than 5 per cent a year.
Some state governments made quiet efforts to control the growth in the prison population, including by introducing intermediate sanctions such as community work and periodic detention. It backfired. Reacting to public pressure, the courts used these intermediate sanctions not to send fewer offenders to jail but to increase the penalties on offenders they formerly would have let off with a bond or a fine.
Worse, although none of the intermediate sanctions was designed to reduce the risk of re-offending, they were presented as the offender's last chance to avoid prison. So when they re-offended, that is where they had to go.
Meanwhile, police began targeting repeat offenders and seeking to have their bail refused. Over the decade to 2007, the number of prisoners on remand in Australian jails rose by 42 per cent, meaning that now more than one prisoner in five is on remand, that is, yet to be found guilty.
By 2006-07, the recurrent cost of corrective services nationally had risen to $1.8 billion a year, a real increase of 72 per cent since 1994-95. Add the cost of building new jails and the cost rises to more than $2.3 billion a year.
From about 2000, recorded rates of property crime began to fall. Repeat: the crime wave has diminished. Studies suggest this is mainly the result of a fall in heroin use, but longer prison sentences have also helped. The rule of thumb seems to be that a 10 per cent increase in the prison population gets you a reduction of 2 to 4 per cent in serious crime.
However, the reduction comes not so much from deterrence as from incapacitation. That is, when a baddie's locked up, he can't rob you. So the more baddies you have locked up at any time, the less crime. The catch, however, is what economists call the law of diminishing returns. You can't keep locking up more and more of the offender population and get the same degree of reduction in crime. Indeed, we seem already to have hit diminished returns. Taking the figures for NSW, between 2000 and March last year the prison population rose continuously. The amount of property and violent crime fell between 2000 and 2004, but since then has begun to level off.
If we had any sense we would switch to policies aimed at reducing the rate of re-offending. Any success would reduce crime and save money. Recent research says many types of rehabilitation programs work. But since most of us enjoy worrying about crime, and the media make money amplifying our fears, don't expect to see sensible policies introduced soon.
Just remember, the next time you wonder why state governments don't spend more on health and education, that our emotion-driven approach to crime is consuming an ever-growing share of the taxes we pay.
LNK |
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