A Victorian MP is calling for sweeping changes to the state’s prison system, including avoiding jail time altogether for some after a review into the system recommended a major overhaul.
A report tabled to the Victorian parliament this week made 100 recommendations for change.
Among the changes included making bail more accessible for youth offenders, automatic parole, home detention as an alternative to prison and rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Victorian Reason Party leader Fiona Patten said incarceration did not work, and rising jail figures and the crime rate reflected that.
“I think jail is now becoming our response to mental health, it’s becoming our rxjmtzywesponse to homelessness, it’s becoming our response to family violence, to disability,” Ms Patten told 3aw.
“We need urgent work to improve the way we deliver justice to ensure community safety and to find modern solutions to reduce offending and reoffending.”
The Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee, of which Ms Patten chairs, has recommended the state government adopt a more modern and rehabilitation-focused approach to justice in Victoria.
The comprehensive inquiry examined all aspects of the criminal justice framework with a particular focus on early intervention, the overrepresentation of vulnerable cohorts, policing, victims of crime, bail and remand, courts and sentencing, prisons and rehabilitation, and the judiciary.
The committee heard evidence that despite a 57.6 per cent increase in Victoria’s prison population in the decade to June 30, 2020, this hadn’t always resulted in better outcomes for the community.
It also found changes to the state’s bail system in 2013 and again in 2017-18 had led to a massive rise in the number of people on remand.
The figure had almost tripled to just under 3000 by 2019.
“The purpose of bail is to keep the community safe from high-risk offenders,” Ms Patten said.
“Denying bail to so many has disproportionately impacted women, Aboriginal Victorians, children and young people, and people living with disability.”
The Reason Party leader, who has been an advocate for the supervised drug-injecting facility at North Richmond, called the discovery of a bag of heroin in a Richmond street “frightening”.
The bag of heroin, estimated to be worth around $5000, was found at the front gate of a house near a primary school near the safe-infecting facility.
Police confirmed the bag was found alongside jewellery outside a house on Peers St.
The finding on Friday morning led opposition MPs to blast the government’s decision to implement the facility, which was built to reduce overdoses and deaths.
“This is another example of what we’re doing now is not working, but it’s frightening and I’m pleased to hear someone found it before someone was hurt,” Ms Patten said.
“Police are constantly saying they want to go after the traffickers and the manufacturers, and they want the users to be treated as a health issue.
