WHY 'LAW AND ORDER' IS A RACIAL ISSUE TOO

OF THE Australian states, Queensland and Western Australia have by far the
highest rate of incarceration. And yet, despite the huge cost of keeping
convicted criminals in prison, if the emphasis on law and order in the
election campaigns in both states is any guide, the electorate's hunger for
retribution is far from satiated in either state.

Why? There is no doubt that crime stories, particularly violent and bizarre
crime stories, sell more newspapers and attract larger audiences for radio
and TV than do stories on the economy.

And it is not surprising that the tabloid press and commercial radio and TV
have become expert in satisfying this need, so the public is led to believe
that the level of crime, particularly crimes of violence, is much higher
than in reality.

But there has been a growth in drug-related crime. The reason for this is
the criminalisation of the sale and distribution of some drugs, even though
a case might be made that the costs to the community of legal drugs such as
tobacco and alcohol are far higher than of the drugs that society has
decided to outlaw.

It would appear the war on drugs has been conclusively lost around the world.

Crime is what the criminal law says it is. It is about time illicit drugs
were decriminalised and the anti-social aspect of usage was seen for what
it is: primarily a health problem rather than a crime problem.

The growth in drug-related crime (largely against property) - and the
media's willingness to pander to our mordant interest in violent crime -
may help explain why no politician who wants to remain in power can afford
to be seen to be soft on crime, and why law and order is one of the major
items on the political agenda.

The climate of public opinion in favor of longer jail sentences may also be
assisted by prison privatisation, where profits are directly related to the
number of inmates.

But while the shift in public opinion away from rehabilitation to
retribution may help explain why the rate of imprisonment increased by
40per cent between 1989 and 1999 (according to the Australian Bureau of
Statistics), it doesn't explain the wider divergence in rates between the
different states and territories, and the growth in rates.

According to the ABS, in the decade to 1999 the rate of imprisonment in
Queensland and Western Australia rose by 70per cent and 56per cent
respectively, to 177 and 216 per 100,000 population compared to a rate of
only 145 for the total population of Australia.

Queensland and Western Australia (and the Northern Territory) have had
significantly higher imprisonment rates and rates of growth than the rest
of the country over the decade. But public opinion and the political
response to that opinion suggests that, far from being satiated, the demand
for even more "law and order" and even more retribution against criminals
is growing.

By comparison, Victoria has the lowest rate of incarceration in the
Commonwealth. According to the ABS, Victoria's imprisonment rate was 69per
100,000 population in 1989 and 74 in 1999 - a rise of only 6per cent over
the decade. Yet the push for more "law and order" and harsher prison
sentences from Victorian public opinion seems to be far weaker that in the
rest of Australia.

And, as Sydneysiders constantly boast, Sydney, not Melbourne, is the crime
capital of Australia.

So are Victorians more civilised than the rest of Australia? I fear not.
The Productivity Commission's 2001 report on government services has a
graph of indigenous and non-indigenous imprisonment rates, which shows a
remarkably constant non-indigenous imprisonment rate of just under 100 per
100,000 adults. The large variation is in the indigenous rate, which varied
from just under 1000 per 100,000 population in Victoria to about 1700 in
Queensland and 3000 in Western Australia.

These figures suggest most of the variation in prison rates relates to the
size of the Aboriginal population in each state or territory, rather than
any real differences in attitudes to retribution. Victorians are far less
agitated about locking up more criminals, because the Aboriginal population
is far less visible here.