NEED TO ATTACK CAUSES OF CRIME

YOU CAN'T expect an election campaign to pass without political leaders
thumping the pulpit about law and order.

This week the Prime Minister, John Howard, chose Western Australia - a
state which already has criminal laws among the most draconian in the
country - for the announcement of new Coalition law-and-order spending.

In addition to some predictable, pre-election tub-thumping about ''cracking
down on crime'' and US-style ''zero-tolerance'' crime-fighting, there was a
welcome promise of federal money for a new computer database which might
actually help police solve crimes.

Mr Howard pledged $50 million to set up a computer network which would
enable the states to share the kind of information - DNA samples,
fingerprints, car registration details, apprehended violence orders, gun
licence details and so on - so crucial to modern crime-solving.

The database would also contain details about convicted paedophiles,
enabling police to keep track of known paedophiles who cross state borders
and helping police ensure that people convicted of paedophilia in one
jurisdiction cannot obtain work which might endanger children in another.

While there are serious civil-liberties implications in keeping track of
people who have already paid a penalty for their crimes, paedophilia is one
area where vigilance is particularly warranted. The rate of recidivism is
high and society needs the wherewithal to ensure that people convicted of
paedophilia are not able to move interstate and obtain work which puts them
in a position of trust concerning children.

Access to such information must obviously be strictly controlled, and it
must be used for only the narrowest of purposes, but as long as care is
exercised, such a database might be extremely useful.

But worthy as the database initiative is, the Prime Minister was unable to
resist a bit of ''tough-on-crime'' tub-thumping too, calling on the states
to look at overseas initiatives such as New York's ''zero-tolerance'' crime
policy, and criticising the tendency to view all criminals as victims of
society. Music to the ears of a certain type of voter, perhaps, and the
law-and-order lobby, but not terribly useful in addressing crime.

Long experience has shown that increasing police powers, lengthening
sentences and fixing longer or mandatory jail terms may help governments
win votes, but they do little to address the underlying social reasons for
crime: drug abuse, unemployment, fractured family and social ties.

The problem with funding such reactive policies at the expense of
initiatives to address the root causes of crime is that politicians
heighten the expectations of the community that crime rates will be reduced
and that people will be (or at least will feel) safer in their homes. When,
as is inevitable, these things do not result, disillusionment sets in. And
the response of politicians to that disillusionment? To do the same thing
all over again.

The conservative parties are by no means the worst offenders when it comes
to such reactive law-and-order policies. Nor are they alone in succumbing
to the dangerous temptation to equate expenditure on policing with outcomes
in law enforcement.

Labor's justice spokesman Nick Bolkus was in hot water yesterday after
foolishly trying to link Coalition funding cuts in law enforcement to an
increase in heroin deaths in Western Australia and a fall in the price of
heroin.

One only has to look at the poor return the United States gets on its vast
expenditure on the ''war on drugs'' to see that the correlation is a
simplistic one.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan