By Gary Humphries, Canberra Times, 1 September 2024

The death of an Aboriginal man at the ACT’s prison on Thursday – the second death in custody in a month and the fourth in three years – will inevitably generate a, by now, all-too-familiar cycle of hand wringing, finger-pointing and pious condemnation of the failures of Canberra’s justice system. Undoubtedly many of the criticisms fired at that system will hit the mark – after all, the same criticisms have been fired off time and time again in recent years.

It’s hard to imagine, for example, that detractors will overlook how staff at the Alexander Maconochie Centre identified as long ago as 2015 the hanging risk inherent in the design of cell doors, and how in 2020 a review identified the “urgent” need to act on that design flaw. It will undoubtedly be pointed out that action on these problems has been deferred again and again because of “budget constraints”.

But training our attention on the circus which inevitably surrounds the latest coronial inquiry into yet another death in custody distracts us from the bigger, much more important question – why our jail is occupied by so many people willing to self-harm.

The real issue, in other words, is not how people in jail attempt to take their own lives, but why. And could it be that, by addressing the deep personal despair and dysfunction which leads a person to that dire state, we might be able not only to avoid individual tragedies but to counter and reverse the recidivism which is so characteristic of our criminal justice system?

The ACT has the lowest incarceration rate in Australia, but it also has the highest rate of people returning to prison, with 80% of all detainees having been in prison before. What this suggests is that imprisonment fuels, rather than deters, criminality. The evidence is overwhelming that a high proportion of our prison population nationally consists of people with complex social, intellectual, health and interpersonal problems which are exacerbated by incarceration. In these circumstances, jailing is “correctional” in name only.

In truth, our jail could be accused of merely warehousing criminals rather than rehabilitating them. Imprisonment is the “default” response to criminal behaviour, but the evidence increasingly suggests that it is the least effective response.

The social dimension of crime in the ACT is illustrated by the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in our jail. First Nations people make up only about 2% of the population of Canberra, but over one-quarter of the prison population. This fact argues powerfully that their criminal offending has more to do with their aboriginality than with any personal failings as citizens.

Similarly, sentenced prisoners are more likely than Australians generally to have suffered childhood trauma or abuse, to have poor educational attainment, to be addicted to alcohol or illicit drugs, to have a history of mental illness or cognitive disability and to have experienced domestic violence and homelessness. If we expect people with these debilitating backgrounds to turn away from crime but offer – in the context of imprisonment – absolutely no tools by which this might be achieved, we perpetuate the cycle of criminality rather than break it.

There are alternatives. Almost every country in Western Europe experiences lower levels of imprisonment and higher rates of rehabilitation than does Australia. This is because those systems invest in programs designed to identify and address the underlying social and personal problems which have led to people being imprisoned.

Even in Australia, there are dozens of effective programs in every state and territory, mostly in the not-for-profit sector, which are achieving dramatic successes in creating pathways out of criminality. But these programs are patchy and under-resourced, and most work best outside the context of prisons. Unsurprisingly, the environment of concrete walls and barbed wire makes learning new skills or addressing long-term psychological trauma a serious challenge.

The dividends of investing in alternatives to incarceration are all too apparent. Last year the total net operating and capital cost of adult and children’s imprisonment in Canberra was more than $120 million. And that’s just the cost to taxpayers – the social and personal cost to victims of crime is immeasurable.

Seeking effective alternatives to imprisonment is not based on an ideological aversion to jailing. Rather it acknowledges the substantial failings of a system which addresses symptoms and not causes of criminal behaviour.

We need a steely determination to act on the criminological evidence of what works and what doesn’t in deterring people from crime. One thing is clear, however: increasing statutory penalties for crimes is generally unlikely to make a difference. Potential offenders with highly dysfunctional personal lives are unlikely even to be aware of heavier penalties, much less to act based on the threat they represent.

Sadly, prisons which fully insulate their occupants from any risk of self-harm are probably non-existent. A much more effective solution to deaths in custody is surely to address the underlying reasons people seek to harm themselves, and to tackle those reasons. Hope is a far more effective tool in turning around such behaviour than despair.

Gary Humphries is former ACT Chief Minister and Senator. He is co-chair of the Justice Reform Initiative in the ACT.