Australians immune to prison problem

THE proportion of indigenous people in jail has doubled in the last 20 years but the question is whether Australians still care.

John Lawrence, president of the Northern Territory Bar Association, says that during the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the number of indigenous people in Australian jails was 14 per cent.

"In 1989 that was perceived as scandalous and disgraceful," Mr Lawrence told AAP.

More than twenty years later, that figure has nearly doubled to 27 per cent.

"Australian people now are much less likely to be shocked, we're a different mob than we were then," Mr Lawrence says.

He says the figures will climb as the NT government enforces tough new laws as part of an election-winning promise to crack down on crime.

The jurisdiction already jails more people than anywhere else in Australia.

"The proportion of people in jail here is four to five times the national average. This place is a gulag," Mr Lawrence says.

More than sixty per cent of inmates are being held on six-month or shorter terms, for mostly petty crimes such as shoplifting or driving infringements.

But Attorney-General John Elferink says prison figures have dropped eight per cent since mandatory sentencing began in March.

But the Darwin Correction Centre is still at 110 per cent of its capacity, with 776 people held in cells designed to hold 745.

"We could go up to about 135 per cent of capacity before it becomes a substantial issue," he says.

The government has spent $500 million on a new 1000-bed prison, to be ready next year, but critics say that when it is completed it will already be 83 beds short.

"With the current projections that's probably close to the truth," says Mr Elferink.

Mr Lawrence says the government has made it easier to jail people.

"It's easier to prosecute a crime and obtain a conviction than it used to be - bail is harder to get now because it's been reduced to reflect the tougher approach," he says.

The NT government's prisoner projections from June last year show that by December next year there will be 1940 prisoners, and by 2020 there will be 3737 - more than double the beds currently available.

Those working on the frontlines of crime in the NT say there has to be another way.

"Jails are necessary for serious and dangerous offenders but they should be seen as a last resort, not a first resort," says Priscilla Collins, CEO of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA).

"The significant number of people in jail for sentences of less than three months is a scandal. They should be dealt with elsewhere with community service or diversionary programs that would reduce stress and costs on prisons."

It's those who are most disadvantaged - addicts, the homeless, products of domestic violence - who are most often picked up by police, and the majority of those people are Aboriginal, who make up four out of five prisoners in the NT.

NAAJA advocates justice reinvestment, where money that would be spent on prisons is redirected into community programs that prevent offending before it occurs.

This can include anything from mother-nurse partnerships to help disadvantaged mothers learn to parent well, to vocational programs that get kids away from trouble and into jobs.

Mr Elferink says the prison problem stems from a dependency on hand-outs.

He says justice reinvestment is "a noble ideal" but the NT first has to deal with the issue of passive welfare, which he says is primarily funded by the federal government.

"The welfare system underwrites so much bad behaviour in this community."

Mr Elferink says the government is running programs to help prisoners prepare for a life after jail, such as Sentenced to a Job.

There are 64 low-risk prisoners who are currently in fulltime work, paying $125 a week in board to the prison and 5 per cent of their income into a victims' assistance fund.

When they leave jail, they keep their job and take with them a start-up fund of $15,000 to $20,000 of savings from their work, which is held in a trust fund for them until their release.

Mr Lawrence says concerns over cost will prevail as people realise prisons are draining their taxes while crime persists.

"What motivates the executive (is) always money, not idealism," he says.

It costs $50,000 to lock an adult up for six months, and $100,000 to lock a juvenile up for six months, says Ms Collins.

"The CLP is going to have a budget blowout and it's happening very quickly," she says.

But even worse than a loss of money is the loss of culture, indigenous musician and Greens Senate candidate Warren H. Williams says.

"Those people that are in jail are the ones who do cultural ceremonies, and they're the ones that teach the young kids," he says.

"If we lock up our mob all the time the kids don't learn and the ceremonies don't get done, so we lose our culture."

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