The state government is to be commended on some of its more generous budget announcements this week, particularly those focused on the regions, and which lay the groundwork for a prosperous and healthy future.
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But there is one budget allocation that will bring jobs and growth to the Ballarat region and yet does not hint at quite so rosy a future.
This is the ballooning cost of correctional facilities as Victoria scurries to build prisons to house the extra inmates of its law and order policies.
Quite apart from the running costs, this budget has committed $447million to add 871 beds to the prison system.
Providing much needed relief for local police stations that have been forced to bear the front-line brunt of this excess of inmates is certainly to be welcomed. But more worrying is what this trend represents in a bigger picture view.
Key policies of the state government – including a prohibition of suspended sentencing, baseline sentencing and an overhaul of the parole system – have not yet even come into effect.
The full consequences of this on the prison numbers have not even been felt yet, so if the government is playing catch-up with its budget expenditure then in several years we could see a full blown crisis.
When health, education and welfare services are screaming they have been desperately short-changed it is concerning that prisons are our secure growth industry.
While a government has an obligation to both protect its citizens and house prisoners appropriately, the worry is that these costs will only escalate in what has all the potential to be
a self-perpetuating rather than a reformatory industry.
Underlying this is the broader issue whether simply “locking them up” solves any long-term
problems.
Does Australia want to live in a society where only the deterrent of incarceration is the incentive for law and order?
A study of the worst of our crimes, including sexual depravity and those committed under the deranged hysteria of ice, indicate punishment is the last thing the perpetrators are thinking about.
While at least the menaces are removed from society, there is a more complex problem around those who are borderline criminals and more importantly the vital role the prison system has to play in rehabilitation.
A righteously jabbering media and a fearful public coaxed with knee-jerk policies can readily yield electoral results.
But in this budget we are seeing the costs behind those actions.
Ironic too to think that Australia was built on the failure of this kind of policy when, in the newly industrialised and urbanised England, punitive justice was seen as the most effective way of controlling order; when the hulks were overflowing and the dismal and distant New Holland was seen as an expedient fix.