Penal diversity within Australia

Abstract

In this article, we start from internationally developed models explaining growing punitiveness and increasing imprisonment rates, to analyse the penal situation within Australia. While the eight Australian jurisdictions share many of the characteristics that have been identified as being important determinants of the size of the prison population, local features of these societies result in significant differences in punishment. The aim of the article is to describe the main drivers of penal policy in four Australian states (New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia). Specific attention will be paid to the situation of Indigenous peoples and the impact of the country's colonial history. It will be argued that the explanatory models can explain the trend in the Australian imprisonment rates, but not the different levels between these rates.

Electronic monitoring: The experience in Australia

“…Whilst similar in character in most respects, each Australian state and territory has its own criminal justice system and, as such, laws and penalties for offenders differ across state/territory boundaries. Notably, there is significant penal diversity across Australia (Tubex et al, 2015), which has manifested in varying rates in the use of prison and community-based penalties. At the time of writing, there were nearly 40,000 prisoners in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016a).…”

Community Sanctions as Pervasive Punishment: A Review Essay

“…This 'agonistic' approach 'stresses the centrality of struggles between actors with different types and amounts of power, endlessly contesting the nature of criminal justice' (McNeill 2019: 38). While penal struggles are profoundly influenced by structural, cultural and political change, we need to understand how 'the internal stresses that these forces create are manipulated and managed by the differently situated and resourced penal actors who struggle to construct and reconstruct criminal justice in law, policy and practice' (McNeill 2019: 39) Such accounts, arguably aligned with some Australian analyses (see Cunneen et al 2013;Tubex et al 2015;Brown 2006) pay greater attention to national, regional and jurisdictional differences, and local context and influences including the effect of iconic cases and 'happenstance'.…”

“…Further, rather than remaining at a broad level of historical and sociological analyses, such as a 'culture of control', state-and territory-level variations in judicial and correctional structures need to be examined. There is a paucity of such work in the Australian context (Tubex et al 2015). Such work might show that rather than being over-determined by macro-economic, social and cultural structures, state-level variations can be explained by lower-level institutional practices and histories (e.g., specific forms of supervision that are targeted and supportive, as in Victoria's previously long-standing lower imprisonment rates and better post release support services, the former currently being eroded).…”

“…There is no work like that of Phelps (2013Phelps ( , 2017aPhelps ( , 2017b analysing the history of both imprisonment rates and community corrections rates across the Australian states and territories. Thus, we are poorly placed to trace the different trajectories and trends across the states and territories and IJCJ&SD 193 www.crimejusticejournal.com 2020 9(2) investigate the local institutional, political, cultural and legal histories of contestation that have produced differences (Tubex et al 2015). One area in which there has been a recent burst of research is in public attitudes to community sanctions, especially parole (Bartels et al 2018;Fitzgerald et al 2016Fitzgerald et al , 2018.…”

Stemming the Tide of Aboriginal Incarceration

“…Similarly, in Western Australia, research has established that the high rates of Aboriginal overrepresentation in prisons is a result of traditionally strong reliance on imprisonment as a sentencing option, a number of government led 'law and order' initiatives such as mandatory sentencing and truth in sentencing legislation, the way the judiciary reacted to legal interventions, as well as changes to the release practices of the Prisoner Review Board. 79 Increased incarcerations by the courts in Western Australia may also reflect further amendments made to the Criminal Code 1913 (WA) and the introduction of 'three strikes' legislation for repeat home burglary offenders in the Sentencing Act 1995 (WA). For example, in Western Australia mandatory and presumptive terms of imprisonment have expanded from their use in repeat home burglaries 80 to now also being used for third strike breaches of violence restraining orders.…”