PUNISHMENT DOESN'T PAY

SOME years ago, United States talkshow host Phil Donahue came up with a
novel way to convince Americans that capital punishment is wrong: televise
executions.

Lock-and-load conservatives and liberals instantly joined forces to decry
his outrageous suggestion. Surely there was enough violence on television
already? And don't the condenmed deserve a little privacy while they're
being put to death?

You know you're living in a strange world when people are more concerned
about the images of violence they see on their television screens than real
acts of violence sanctioned by their government.

Donahue's point was precisely this. In a democratic state, voters have a
right to know how the justice system works and how it affects people in
real ways. It's one thing to sit at home calling for harsher sentences
because someone's nicked your convertible Fiasco for the third time. But
it's quite another to see what harsher penalties actually mean for
criminals, for the justice system and, ultimately, for everyone who lives
in its shadow.

Like most people, I'd never been inside a jail until recently. I thought I
had some idea of what they're like, but nothing prepares you for the shock
of seeing incarcerated human beings. Human beings who are disciplined and
watched (in many cases, literally, by video cameras) 24 hours a day. People
who have no privacy and no access to freedoms so small we don't even notice
we have them.

There are, of course, people in jail who've committed terrible, perhaps
unforgivable, crimes. But do the majority of people in jail really fall
into this category?

If you listen to the Rambo-style rhetoric of many of our state politicians
you'd think they did. In Victoria, "lock-em-up" rhetoric has resulted in a
booming prison population, despite the fact that crime rates haven't
increased. In New South Wales, Premier Bob Carr has been banging the law
and order drum with equal fervor. Under his government, the prison
population has risen to 6900, up from 6100 in the early '90s.

The system is now so strained that the Carr Government has even been forced
to reopen Parramatta Jail, which was closed as unfit to house prisoners
only a year ago.

Across Australia, courts are under increasing pressure to jail people. And,
contrary to popular opinion, judges have been getting tougher, not softer,
on crime.

But just who are we sending to prison? What happens to people when they get
there and how likely are they to reoffend when they leave?

Recent studies suggest that up to three-quarters of people in jail are
there because of drug-related offences. In simple terms, they either
committed a crime to get drugs or were under the influence of drugs when
they offended.

Drug abuse and addiction (alcohol included) is clearly deeply implicated in
criminal behavior. Yet what impact do jails have on this problem? They
often exacerbate it. Counselling services in jails are seriously
underfunded and drugs are cheap and widely available.

What else do we know about the kinds of people who get sent to jail? Well,
a shockingly high proportion are Aboriginal (in NSW, for instance, one in
50 Aboriginal men is in prison).

We also know that more than half of the prison population is functionally
illiterate and that many prisoners suffer from serious physical and mental
health problems.

The prison population, in other words, is made up of some of the most
disadvantaged groups in our society. Poverty, poor education and social
alienation, then, are also intimately related to crime.

But once again the jail system doing very little to redress these issues.
Lack of resources means that many prisoners come out of jail with the same
problems they went in with.

Often they acquire new reasons to feel angry and alienated. In a recent
comprehensive study of NSW prisons, David Heilpern found that a quarter of
male inmates aged between 18 and 25 are sexually assaulted in jail and one
half are physically assaulted.

Sexual assaults are often violent, recurrent and involve a number of
assailants. But they are almost never reported for fear of reprisals.
Heilpern theorises that prison rape turns many men into human "time-bombs",
set to explode on release.

Jails, as they're run today, are possibly the worse place to send many
criminals. They exacerbate drug abuse and health problems, they do nothing
to increase a prisoner's chance of finding employment, they brutalise young
men and reinforce violent behavior.

Logic, unfortunately, has little to do with public perceptions about crime
and punishment. Politicians know it, so they go on building jails and
talking tough.

Tackling drug abuse, social inequity, literacy problems and Aboriginal
disadvantage doesn't win many votes, after all. And most voters will never
learn the truth -about what goes on inside the prison walls.

And who'd want to? Once you've looked inside a jail, it's hard to forget
the experience. Perhaps Donahue is right - perhaps we all need to spend a
little more time in prison.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski