Victoria’s silent war on crime rages unabated

In a marked shift since the 2018 Victorian state election, the drumbeat of traditional law and order politics has faded from the front pages of the major newspapers to the quiet margins of political debate — but not without a price, say legal and human rights experts.

Tania Wolff, president of the Law Institute of Victoria, says one consequence of this “deafening silence” was the corresponding unwillingness of the major parties to recognise, much less discuss, the multitude of crises besetting the state’s prison system.

In the decade to 2019, Victoria’s prison population almost doubled, with the annual outlay in operating costs increasing by a factor of three to over $1.6 billion. And though the number of people in prison declined slightly at the height of the pandemic, the trend has, according to the most recent data, proved short-lived.

“Neither party has wanted to engage in a law and order debate this election because it was problematic for the opposition at the last election,” Wolff told Crikey, referencing the drubbing the opposition received for its fearmongering on African gang violence in 2018.

“But I think this government — which has been really progressive on many social issues — is equally quite happy not to make it a priority and to focus on other issues.”

To this end, Wolff spoke to the waves of punitive changes made to bail, parole and sentencing laws under the Andrews government — most of which were inspired by high-profile controversies or crimes, such as the Bourke Street killings — as well as its recent multibillion-dollar investment in prison expansion, none of which are the usual rallying cries of progressive government.

“[These changes] have all been counterintuitive and they’ve gone against every bit of evidence about what actually works to keep communities safe,” she said.

“We’re now in this situation where 44% of our prison population — a crazy proportion — are there on remand. At the same time, we have this brutal Dickensian situation where many people are spending 23 out of 24 hours in a cell every day — not seeing family [or] support services.

“This is a crisis and it is a crisis that’s been worsening for many years.”

It was a sentiment echoed by Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Nerita Waight, who said the consequences of the government’s eight-year war on crime ran contrary to and undermined its wider investments in Indigenous reconciliation.

“The government has spent billions on its tough-on-crime agenda to buy headlines and silence a noisy minority,” she said. “It’s always been about politics, not what’s best for communities”.

“The Aboriginal imprisonment rate has almost doubled in the last 10 years [and] more and more of our people are dying in prison. And yet fixing a criminal legal system that is killing Aboriginal people hasn’t been discussed by Labor or the Coalition.”

Greens MP and spokesperson for health and justice Tim Read said the bipartisan silence spoke to the success of Labor’s bid to neutralise the opposition as the party of choice for law and order.

“It’s true it didn’t play well for the Libs at the last election, but to avoid controversy in that space Labor has largely adjusted their policy settings to match the Libs,” he said, pointing out that growth in spending on police and prisons had wholly outpaced that of education and health in recent years.

“Rather than investing in the difficult task of meeting social needs and crime prevention and reform, Labor’s been spending billions on expanding the police force and building more prisons to warehouse vulnerable populations, half of [whom] haven’t even been convicted.

“They’re taking the electorate for fools.”

According to the 2022-23 budget papers, construction of the state’s newest prison, the Western Plains Correctional Centre, has cost in the order of $1.2 billion.

The 1248-bed prison, which remains empty, is located in the Barwon South West region near Geelong, and has a physical footprint five times the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The new maximum-security prison has primarily been framed as an investment in jobs and the economy, with community safety cited as a subsidiary consideration.

“[The] Western Plains Correctional Centre will provide ongoing economic benefits to the Geelong region,” read a statement on the Community Safety Building Authority’s website. “We’re creating over 1200 jobs and investing $279 million in Greater Geelong.”

A government media release in 2020 likewise said: “The new prison is delivering more than 1000 jobs, with $279 million in economic benefit to the Geelong region.”

Similar statements have accompanied the build of a new $419 million youth detention centre near Werribee in Melbourne’s west, described as a “state of the art youth justice centre”.

When asked, Read said it was “bizarre the government would boast about using imprisonment” as a form of job creation.

“This is trying to put a positive spin on a very sad social story,” he said.

As recently reported in Crikey, the decision to build the new 140-bed youth detention centre is not without controversy, given there are fewer than 120 young people on average in detention on any one day in Victoria.

On top of these new builds, the government is currently spending a further $791 million to upgrade and expand five existing prisons across the state, as part of the record $1.8 billion set aside in its 2019 budget for prison infrastructure.

In the most recent budget, a further $342 million was pumped into the $4 billion pool of funding Victoria Police now receives annually, which, with more than 22,000 personnel, makes it the highest-funded and largest police force in the country.

That investment has occurred against the backdrop of a steady decline in the incidence of crime over recent years, with the state’s crime rate at its lowest in five years, excluding COVID-related breaches in 2020.

Wolff said the funds set aside for prisons and expansion of the police force would be better spent on crime prevention or other essential services, such as health and education.

“What Victorians don’t understand is that none of this is new money; it’s money that’s not going into local schools, that’s not going into transport, health or other essential services that we need so much as a community,” she said.

“Just as every civilised country around the world is looking to improve their rehabilitative programs, in Victoria, in 2022, we’re building more prisons. And instead of addressing the problems in our criminal justice system, we have this deafening silence.”

A government spokesperson said the annual operating budget for prisons in 2022-23 is $1.83 billion. As of the end of October, there were 6717 prisoners in Victoria, up from 6651 last year, nearly 3000 of whom were unsentenced.

Minister for Corrective Services Sonya Kilkenny was contacted for comment.