The use of prisons in Australia: Reform directions is the first major report from the Institute of Public Affairs Criminal Justice Project. It was co-authored by Andrew Bushnell and Daniel Wild. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Criminal justice
South Australia’s New Home Detention Laws Should Not Be About Coddling Criminals
This article originally appeared in the Adelaide Advertiser on the 28th of October 2016.
Lindsay Bassani, a former Education Department bureaucrat and football coach, was sentenced to home detention after stealing almost $10,000 from the South Australian Aboriginal Sports Training Academy. Despite being allowed to avoid prison, he is now complaining about his electronic tracking bracelet because of the stigma of being seen with it.
The fact that Mr Bassani is complaining is a good thing. It means he feels like he is being punished, which is precisely the point of his sentence. Continue reading
Submission To The Royal Commission Into The Protection And Detention Of Children In The Northern Territory
This letter was submitted to the Royal Commission that was announced following a Four Corners report on juvenile detention conditions in the Northern Territory.
The central contention of this submission is that while there is rightly significant community concern about the operation of youth justice facilities in the Northern Territory, this concern should not be used to indict the entire youth justice system in the Territory. Underlying the problems affecting these facilities are social, economic, and cultural factors that better explain the unique aspects of youth justice in the Northern Territory than do blanket denunciations of institutional prejudice.
Nonetheless, there is good reason to believe that Australia’s criminal justice system as a whole is failing the public. This submission concludes by placing the problems of the Northern Territory’s youth justice system in the context of the growing need for criminal justice reform in Australia.
We Need To Raise The Bar Of Our Criminal Justice System
This piece originally appeared on Huffington Post Australia on 29 July 2016.
The recent Four Corners exposé of mistreatment of young people in juvenile detention in the Northern Territory shocked all Australians. The Prime Minister has correctly called a Royal Commission into the abuse.
Although the terms of reference for the review are quite narrow, Australia should take this incident as an opportunity to reconsider our approach to criminal justice more generally. Because the kids who suffer in abusive detention centres will have a tough time staying off the path to a life of crime, where they will join a growing number of their countrymen, and from which there is currently little chance of escaping given the way our criminal justice system operates. Continue reading
Let’s Get Fine Defaulters Out Of Our Jails
Appeared in the Canberra Times 28th of July 2016
Reporting of Andrew Leigh’s reappointment as shadow assistant treasurer has been dominated by the strange decision of the Labor Party to reduce his salary by $40,000. This is particularly a shame because Leigh is the author of a policy where Labor and a free market think tank like the Institute of Public Affairs can rightly see eye to eye.
During the election campaign, Leigh announced a Labor government would allow fines for administrative and criminal violations to be paid off via an income-contingent fine recovery process. This makes great economic and moral sense. It should be welcomed by both sides of politics. Continue reading
Andrew Bushnell 