Thread by @KirstiMiller30

Let’s end this asinine “war on drugs”. Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol, it made things worse. And doesn’t work with drugs, either.

https://twitter.com/kirstimiller30/status/1488837292479623168

Beating the drug epidemic is going to take a holistic approach.There is no one-fit all solution to the scourge of drugs it has to be a combination of education, good parenting,mental health services, better rehab facilities in our regions & prisons & getting tough on dealers.

Harm minimisation programs such as pill testing and safe injecting rooms & needle exchange programs won’t solve the drug epidemic but they do save lives, they do make the community safer & they minimise the harm to the drug user, their families & the community.

Once a drug addict arrived at my prison the damage has already been done to the addict, to the families of the addict and to the community.

We don’t need issues like this to become a political point scoring debates. Whilst our politicians continue to ignore that harm minimisation programs work young people continue to die from bad pills at music events and from dirty needles in prisons and in the community.

Government funding priorities across 🇦🇺 have effectively criminalised the consequences of drug use marginalisation & failed to address the causes of offending. This is why our prisons presently warehouse Aboriginal men, women & children as well as the mentally ill & drug addicts

Governments continue to lavish resources on incarceration despite empirical research that re-offending is better addressed by rehabilitation programs, education and vocational training, stable housing, and employment.

Australia, like our US and British nuclear submarine cousins, is fond of locking people up. Australia has returned to mass incarceration we now incarcerate a greater share of the adult population than at any point since the late 19th century the convict days.

Western Australia holds the distinction of having the highest Indigenous jailing rate on earth. Aboriginal people in WA are incarcerated at a rate eight times greater than the jailing rate for black males in Apartheid South Africa.

No jurisdiction in Australia – not even the ACT – jails black males at a rate less than the days of Apartheid South Africa.

The increase in the Australian prison population does not seem to be due to crime rates, which have mostly declined over the past generation. Instead, govt funding priorities failing to address disadvantaged communities, higher reporting rates, stricter policing practices,

tougher sentencing laws, and more stringent bail laws appear to be the main drivers of Australia’s growing prison population.

We have to break the cycle of poverty, unemployment and incarceration they are all linked to disadvantage. The more disadvantaged the more crime, the more people locked up it’s the revolving door syndrome.

The solutions to reduce imprisonment & close the gap will never be found in any of the prisons I managed or any private or public prison. The solutions need to be community-designed and driven, with government support.

Australia cannot afford the social, health and economic costs of over-imprisonment. Strong, healthy & connected communities are the most effective way to prevent crime & make communities safer, it’s not fucking rocket science.

Building more prisons for 230+ years has resulted in Australia’s First Nations People to be the most incarcerated Indigenous Community on this Planet with a life expectancy a full decade less than white 🇦🇺 Sadly #Budget2021 failed to address this Australian tragedy.

The very idea of private prisons elicits an intuitive recoil in many because it involves basically making a profit out of people’s misery. 🇦🇺 has blindly followed the trend in the 🇺🇸 & 🇬🇧 with privatised prisons.

The companies operating in Australia are the same global behemoths providing their services in the US and UK, in what is a multi-billion dollar industry.

Private prisons currently operate in five jurisdictions in Australia: New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.

The incentives of private prison companies can easily become opposed to the aims of the humane containment &rehabilitation of prisoners the very purposes of corrective services.

The larger the prison population, the longer the sentences, the larger the payout under government contracts; the more prisoners, the more prisons, the more growth.

Cheaper facilities and fewer services mean more profit. These inescapable relationships are the source of the potential conflict of interest,a choice between the objectives of corrective services to provide a safe, secure & humane custodial envirprovide &

program interventions to reduce the risk of reoffending & those of a maximum profit & growth.

The highest two spenders on prisons are the ACT and Tas, which have no private prisons. Next is Vic, which has the most private prisons, while the cheapest is the NT, which has no private prisons.

Clearly, there is no necessary relationship between privatisation of prisons & taxpayer savings.

Why are governments outsourcing the management of Australian prisons to companies from the Usa and the UK. If there are to be private prisons government contracts must first be offered to Australian companies, shouldn’t they?

Those interested in ensuring human rights are universal and unconditional also have a reason to oppose private prisons as long as they fail to make information about their operations accessible. For the time being, murkiness remains the defining feature of private prisons.

Given the lack of savings in the most privatised state, the opaque ethical standards and the fact that public opinion is clearly against private prisons, it is hard to imagine what is stopping deprivatisation & justice reinvestment.
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