Policies/Law and Order

Official Party Document The veracity of this document is ensured by the National Council and editing of this page is limited to members of the National Council.

Law and order

Prison reform

Reducing the net amount of crime in our country must be a primary long-term goal of our criminal justice system. Although many would argue that has always been the case, Australia's approach to achieving that goal has historically been based on the notion that fear of punishment will stop people from committing crimes. In practice, fear is a poor motivator. Fear cannot direct good behaviour — it can only compete with the other immediate threats in a criminal's life.

Except for the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes, we know that most convicted criminals will eventually be released back into the community. Knowing that they might be your neighbour, would you like them to have experienced years of dehumanising and degrading treatment with limited to no possibility of self-improvement, or would you prefer your new neighbour to have been educated, to have acquired social skills, to be integrated with the community, to have gainful employment and to have a purpose in life?

The Pirate Party finds the latter is preferable.

The cost of crime in Australia

Crime costs Australia $36 billion per year, or about 4.1% of our gross domestic product. The total net expenditure on corrective services alone was approximately $3 billion between 2007 and 2008 — $138 for every person in Australia.

Prisoner information

A brief look at basic statistics on Australia's prison population provide an insight into the causes of recidivism — why prisoners are likely to reoffend and return to prison. One-third of all prison entrants have not completed Year 10, over two-thirds report that they have used illicit drugs in the last twelve months, just over a quarter had employment organised to begin within two weeks of release, and nearly half expect to be homeless. Nearly half have been told by a health professional that they have a mental health disorder, and more than a quarter report being on medication for a mental health disorder. The National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee reports that half of all children born with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder in Australia as a result of alcoholic mothers will end up in prison. These conditions are a recipe for recidivism, and experience bears this out — the Australian Institute of Criminology reports that about two-thirds of prisoners will have been previously imprisoned.

Meaningless soundbites

Contemporary Australia is one of the safest places in the world, but public perception has been distorted by years of media sensationalism. The fear and paranoia created results in every politician needing to declare themselves to be "tough on crime" in order to get elected. "Tough on crime" is a meaningless soundbite, a slogan that represents short-term, shallow thinking about punishment rather than systematic strategies to steadily reduce crime over time and produce more productive and peaceful citizens. Politicians who appear to be spending taxpayers' money on convicted criminals are "exposed" for being too lenient to perpetrators and disrespectful to victims and their families, and run the risk of losing their next election. Despite numerous reports of Royal Commissions and Parliamentary Committees recommending against increased imprisonment, government policies never change.

Do longer sentences reduce crime?

Longer sentences do deter crime — up to a point. There is strong evidence that increasing the certainty of punishment deters crime, but that increasing the length of sentences only deters crime where the initial sentence was short — criminals do value the future, just not as much as the average person.

Is Australia already rehabilitating prisoners?

Legislation in Australia is inconsistent when it comes to the delivery of rehabilitative services at the state, territory and federal levels. In the rare instances where a cohesive legislative commitment can be identified, the legislation is fragmented, with the focus varying between corrections, sentencing, parole programs or court administration. The Australian Institute of Criminology suggests that uniform legislation setting out a generally-accepted understanding of the purposes of rehabilitation and how best to achieve it may remedy this situation.

Does rehabilitation work?

The most effective forms of prisoner treatment are skill-oriented, based on a behavioural or cognitive-behaviour theoretical model and multi-modal. Skills-based programs directed at improving cognitive and employment skills work far better in terms of prisoner rehabilitation than casework and individual or group counselling, and are associated with reduced problem behaviours.

Social impact bonds

The lack of political will to invest in effective rehabilitation strategies can be countered with 'social impact bonds'.

Social impact bonds are an arrangement under which a private business is assigned large randomised batches of prisoners prior to or after release and provides them with whatever reform and rehabilitation services they deem necessary to successfully reintegrate the newly released prisoners. Social impact bonds cover a diverse range of tailored services that are designed to reduce recidivism, and consequent government savings from reduced re-offending are used to pay for this service. If no improvement is made amongst their assigned batch of released prisoners, then the business receives no payment, but if recidivism is reduced and therefore the cost of law enforcement, corrective services and the crimes themselves are reduced as a result, some contractually agreed proportion of that saving is paid to the social impact bond service provider.

In the worst case scenario where no improvement is made, it costs the government nothing.

In the best case scenario, recidivism is reduced, tax paying citizens are created, considerable savings are made, the rates of crime drops, and former prisoners are successfully reintegrated into the workplace and society in general becomes a safer community.

Private prisons — a huge conflict of interest

Private corporations by definition, must strive to increase revenue and profits for their shareholders. Public/private enterprises can be good or bad, depending on how they are structured. The structured arrangement described under "Social Impact Bonds" above is an excellent example of a public/private contract structured in the interests of public good. However, a contractual structure where private corporations own and run prisons as a service to government will inevitably create a conflict of interest. The business will want to grow and therefore it will want to run more prisons and service more prisoners. This is the opposite of the most desirable outcome for the people of any nation — we want less crime, and a corresponding reduction in both prisons and prisoners.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Provide options for alternative sentencing for non-violent offenders

• Support alternative non-custodial sentencing options including weekend detention and home arrest with ankle monitors.
• Optimise sentencing times based around solid research into the effectiveness of sentence times as a deterrent.
• Increase the focus on community service as a form of repayment to society.

Improve incentives for prisoners to undergo rehabilitation and reform

• Institute in-prison, skill oriented rehabilitation programmes, based on a cognitive-behaviour theoretical model.
• Trial a programme in which low-risk prisoners can undertake paid employment, with part of their income being given to a victims of crime fund and the remainder being held for the prisoner until their release.
• Allow prisoners' non-parole periods to be reduced by working, promotions and increasing skill levels where appropriate.
• Ensure transgender prisoners are placed in the correct prisons according to their preferred gender, based on assessment and certification by trained medical and psychiatric professionals.
• Ensure transgender prisoners who were undergoing hormone replacement therapy prior to imprisonment are able to continue their treatment while detained.

Trial social impact bonds

• Run a social impact bond trial for prisoner rehabilitation and reintegration, including an independent academic evaluation of its effectiveness.

Reduce causes of offending and reoffending

• Implement a basic income to reduce motivators for crime and ensure that released prisoners have a source of income on release.
• Decriminalise and legalise illicit drug use and possession, eliminating the majority of non-violent, victimless crimes.
• Direct investment toward expanded accommodation services for mentally ill people facing homelessness to prevent them from ending up in prison.
• Improve the education system to teach more basic 'life skills' as a way to curb re-offending.
• Prohibit the use of private prisons and decommission existing private prisons when existing contracts expire.

Return to contents

An end to the war on drugs

People have always sought to alter their consciousness. Most human activity is an attempt to either experience positive emotions, or gain relief from negative ones. For some, good fortune and friendship provide the means for happiness. However, people plagued by isolation and mental illness may look in other directions for peace and relief. It is this category of people who are the primary target and victims of the war on drugs.

John Ehrlichman- senior advisor to President Nixon. Source

The war on drugs is best understood as a war on a market. Such wars are futile: demand always creates supply, and ad-hoc attacks on supply channels do nothing other than reduce the quality of drugs and increase the risks. Harsh punishment for drug use targets people who are cut off and isolated, and cuts off and isolates them more. In this way, drug prohibition worsens the fundamental drivers of addiction and forces a substitution of an unregulated black market in place of the legal one, making criminals of regular citizens and funding organised crime.

The cost of the war on drugs

At present the illegal drug market is worth around $300 billion per year, making a mockery of prohibition. After 40 years, it is clear that the choice we face is not between drugs and no drugs, but between legal and illegal drug markets.

The illegal market funnels vast profits to criminals and imposes equally vast costs on society. The US spends $50 billion per year fighting the war on drugs, and global spending is far greater. The secondary costs are incalculable: jailing people for drug offences does far more to destroy individual lives and potential than the drugs themselves. The policy is ineptly targeted, excluding alcohol and tobacco while imposing massive punishments on non-violent users of much less harmful products. In producer countries, the illegal market has enriched drug cartels, causing thousands of deaths every year, corrupting civil societies and creating a risk of failed states.

Prohibition offers no success on any front: figures from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime show no observable decline in global drug use, nor is any decline evident in Australia. Results among individual nations show no correlation between drug use levels and the harshness of drug laws.

The remedy

The experience of Portugal—where decriminalisation led to an observable fall in addiction and deaths—suggests that a much better approach exists. Imprisonment is an immoral and ineffective way of handling mental health issues and other drivers of drug abuse. It is cheaper and more effective to handle these issues in the sphere of public health. Legalising and taxing safe drugs will raise revenue to fund better support services for addicts and their families. Decriminalising other drugs will broaden options for treatment and allow help to be extended without the threat of criminal sanctions. Effective policy must offer help and treatment, but must also recognise that most drug users are neither addicts nor criminals.

In handling drugs, policymakers should also take note of their one success: the campaign against tobacco. The anti-tobacco campaign has reduced the proportion of smokers by 40% over 20 years through a combination of advertising, warnings, and social sanctions in a legal framework. It is a far more successful model than prohibition, and a broader application of it should be considered.

Ultimately however, successful drug policy must bear in mind that the opposite of addiction is not abstinence, but connection. The state cannot control what a person puts into their own body—but it can help addicts to reconnect with society and offer a pathway out of addiction.

The Pirate Party proposes an end to the failed war on drugs and a shift towards an evidence-based model which treats drugs as a health issue instead of a criminal one.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Legalise safe, non-addictive drugs

• Establish a controlled substances committee comprising healthcare professionals. This committee will be instructed to use fact- and evidence-based approaches to:
  • Classify psychoactive substances based on criteria such as:
    • Addictive properties
    • Habituating properties
    • Perception impairment
    • Reversible impact on the user
    • Known therapeutic properties
  • Re-classification will be performed periodically.
  • The committee will be able to recommend conditions for obtaining legalised substances, such as requiring a psychological evaluation, etc.
• Legalise substances which are non-addictive and have a reversible impact on the user.
  • Remove all prohibitions on marijuana subject to appropriate health warnings and quality assurance.
• Apply a tax to legalised drugs.
  • Tax rates will be set at a level which balances the need to manage health impacts with the need to provide financial incentives to avoid the black market.
• Regulate sales of legalised drugs.
  • Require licences for retailers (as per conditions for selling alcohol).
  • Include mandatory warnings on health risks.
  • Restrict products to sale in limited quantities, with no sales to intoxicated persons.
  • Ban all forms of advertising.
  • Ensure products are subject to strict quality control, with penalties for poor product quality being equivalent to those currently applied to pharmaceuticals.
  • Require age verification for all drug sales.
  • Exports to countries where drugs remain illegal will be a criminal offence unless products are sold under license to authorities in those countries that are legally permitted such purchases.
  • Retain criminal penalties for making drugs available to minors.

Partially decriminalise drugs which fail to meet the threshold for legalisation

• Apply decriminalisation to possession, purchase and consumption of small quantities (up to 14 days supply) of drugs for personal use.
  • Handle infractions outside the criminal justice system, with civil penalties including confiscation of drugs, treatment recommendations, and suspension of the right to practice in a profession where a duty of care exists.
  • Ensure treatment can be imposed as part of a prosecution if other civil or criminal acts are committed by a person under the influence of drugs.
  • Penalties for the sale of small quantities of decriminalised drugs should include fines and confiscation of products under civil law.
• Retain criminal sanctions for possession, sale or smuggling of substances in commercial quantities.
• Allow decriminalised drugs to be available under prescription.
  • Supply would be procured following medical consultation in instances where harm minimisation or addiction treatment requires it, or as a mechanism for reducing black market purchasing.
  • Chemists providing drugs will be required to provide dosage levels, toxicity information, and information about side effects, as per standard requirements for medication.

Redirect existing resources and additional revenue to fund more research and support services

• Expand mental health services, rehabilitation facilities, community support services, emergency housing, and programs to assist addicts with social re-integration.
  • Persons seeking treatment will be entitled to protection of their privacy as per a doctor-patient relationship.
• Adopt harm minimisation techniques.
  • Pharmacies will be encouraged to make clean needles and drug testing kits available.
• Redirect police and prison resources towards preventing violent crime.
  • Curb the use of sniffer dogs and random "inspections" at public events.
• Undo restrictions on research and data collection imposed during prohibition.
  • Re-start research programs utilising previously banned drugs.
  • Re-start data collection on drug use and drug effects.

Return to contents