PRISONER NUMBERS "AT A PEAK"

Australia's escalating prison population may be finally peaking, after
doubling in little more than a decade.

There are signs of slowing crime rates, which will mean less community fear
and anxiety, and in turn less pressure to imprison offenders, criminologist
Arie Frieberg said yesterday.

He cautioned against government indulgence in a costly "imprisonment
binge", but also said that new alternatives such as drug courts, and
restorative justice bringing together victims and offenders, were unlikely
to affect prison numbers.

The national prison population stood at 20,737 in March this year,
according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This was nearly 3000
higher than in 1997 and contrasted with only 11,688 in 1987.

Rates of imprisonment were highest in the Northern Territory, with 467 per
100,000 adult population. In New South Wales the rate stood at 149, South
Australia 115 and Victoria 84. The rate in Tasmania was 105, and the
Australian Capital Territory was lowest at 61.

Professor Frieberg, professor of criminology at Melbourne University, said
there was little evidence that increased crime levels caused greater
imprisonment rates. "Rather, the explanation is to be found in courts'
reaction to legislative signals, and communal calls for tough penalties and
sentences.

"As social and economic certainties erode, particularly for older people in
the community, they seek solace in tougher laws. Politicians ... are adept
at tap-ping into these fears," he said.

He told a Beyond Imprisonment corrections conference in Hobart that this
attitude was feeding through to courts, magistrates and judges, who were in
fear of making the wrong decisions. It provoked an approach of: "When in
doubt put them in, rather than, when in doubt, leave them out."

"There is little doubt that in many Western countries public opinion has
become more punitive over recent years," Professor Frieberg said. Support
was growing for tougher measures such as three-strikes laws, mandatory and
minimum sentences, indefinite sentences and truth in sentencing.

But Professor Frieberg said Australia had probably almost reached the peak
in this wave. Imprisonment numbers had levelled off in the past 12 months
in NSW and were declining in SA, though in Victoria there was concern that
they were still growing.

"I think that the United States' massive decrease in crime rates - and they
are across the board - will eventually feed into a loop where the fear and
anxiety finally stops driving the numbers, and people will actually start
feeling safer.

"At the moment people are safer but they don't feel it. You'll get a kind
of `New York effect' where people feel more comfortable on the streets. If
they're more comfortable on the streets they may feel more comfortable
about the kind of responses they make. These things are sea changes; they
aren't incremental. They change reasonably rapidly."

Professor Frieberg said innovations such as drug courts were unlikely to
affect the forces driving changes in prison numbers, which were to do with
the economic climate, perceptions of crime rates and a changed political,
social and emotional environment.