Sharon Webb

WESTBURY LAWYER and anti-prison spokesperson Linda Poulton attended the Government House launch on 6 May of the Tasmanian branch of an organisation aiming for better outcomes in the criminal justice system.

Ms Poulton said the support for the Justice Reform Initiative from the Governor, Her Excellency Professor Kate Warner, made a significant statement.

‘Professor Warner is an Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Tasmania where she lectured in criminal law and criminology’, Ms Poulton said.

‘More than anyone she is qualified to know the merits of JRI’s reforms. The fact that she is hosting the launch of JRI in Tasmania will send a powerful message to the government that building a replica of Risdon is not the right approach.’

Hobart barrister Greg Barns recently described the JRI in his Mercury newspaper column as ‘a bipartisan group of eminent Tasmanians, including former Legislative Council president Jim Wilkinson, former premier Lara Giddings, former Greens leader Christine Milne, Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds, eminent criminologist Professor Rob White, and Professor Therese Henning, who ran the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute.

‘Nationally, the JRI, the brainchild of former Aboriginal affairs minister Robert Tickner, includes former governors general, returned judges, ex-prosecutors, and politicians from both sides of the aisle.

‘The point is, criminal justice is too important to be a political plaything’, he wrote.

A recent JRI report, State of Incarceration: Tasmania’s broken criminal justice system by JRI director Dr Mindy Sitori, maintains the number of Tasmanians entering the prison system has jumped by 37 per cent since 2010.

‘The report notes that jailing Tasmanians is a poor investment’, Mr Barns wrote.

‘The cost of the prison system has risen every year in the past decade. And is that increase in expenditure resulting in greater rehabilitation? No.’

Ms Poulton, spokesperson for Westbury Region Against the Prison, said the Tasmanian

Liberal government’s failure to address the health and housing crises has contributed to the rapidly rising incidence of crime.

‘The stripping of funding from health and housing by a government focused solely on the budget bottom line has essentially exposed our communities to a dramatically increased risk of crime.

‘Unless these underlying factors are addressed, we will be forever building new prisons. Housing inmates costs the taxpayer an incredible $122,000 per inmate per annum.’

Ms Poulton said her invitation to the launch of the Justice Reform Initiative recognised WRAP’s long fight against a prison in the Westbury area.

‘It shows that we are not alone, but part of a much greater cohort of people around Australia who see jails for what they really are, expensive human warehouses that do nothing to keep our community safer. In fact they make it more a dangerous place to be.

‘A few of our members still believe a new prison to be necessary but I hope that an evidence-based approach will now convince many that there are smarter ways to stop our dramatically escalating jail population. A new prison is not the smart way to deal with this. It is completely regressive and ineffective.’