UNITY
SMART ON CRIME
It costs all of us more than $150,000 a year to house a prisoner. For context, we spend about $9,000 educating a child for a year.
In a justice system that's 'smart on crime', we'll invest in solutions that are proven to actually reduce crime rates, not just punish people.
That means evolving our eye-wateringly expensive prison system towards solutions that rehabilitate offenders and reduce their likelihood of reoffending. It also means investing earlier in people — preventing the traumatic experiences in childhood that we know increase the likelihood of later offending.
To get smart on crime, Opportunity will:
- Increase funding for the courts and probation services to get remand prisoner numbers down.
- De-criminalise drug possession (but not supply) and shift to a health-led response to drug issues.
- Expand programmes that help prisoners process the harm of family violence in their past.
- Raise the age of the youth court jurisdiction, in line with developmental science.
- Expand drug and mental health court pilot programmes.
Almost everyone in prison comes out again. What happens in there decides what happens to the rest of us.
The safest thing a prison can do is send someone home who doesn't come back.
