The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/0001/08/text/review5.html A woman's place Date: 08/01/00 Female prisoners have few to turn to in a system that uses jail to solve social problems. Wendy Bacon and Tracy Pillemer report. Caroline has lived behind bars for one year and has two more to go. But already she's worried about what will happen when it's time to leave. "You want to leave so bad but you don't know what you're going to do," she says. Caroline is doing time for drug-related crime. She has no house, no money, no job skills and her children are with their grandmother. "I'm scared to leave ... I'm walking out to nothing," she says. Caroline is one of nearly 50 per cent of NSW women prisoners who have no home to return to when they leave prison. She is in Mulawa, a hotchpotch of new and old buildings wreathed in coiled barbed wire close to Sydney's Olympic site. "Nearly everybody I know comes back because they've got nowhere to go," she says. "[In jail] they don't have to worry about where they're going to find a bed to sleep in at night, where they're going to get their next feed." Although there are still many fewer women in prison than men, the number of women prisoners in NSW has increased by 25 per cent in the past year, and 40 per cent since 1994. Even before the numbers began to increase so dramatically, the NSW Department of Corrective Services had decided on a new $42 million prison for 300 women at Windsor. This plan has been revised down to 200 beds, with two facilities for 50 women each to be built elsewhere. At Mulawa, 120 beds will be closed, leaving room for 180 women. In this planning, Corrective Services did not seek the advice of its Women's Advisory Network, which has not met for more than a year. But in November NSW Legislative Council Coalition and Independent members agreed to set up a select committee to inquire into why prison numbers are increasing and whether a new women's prison is an appropriate response. They called for a moratorium on the building of the new prison. Despite this, the Minister for Community Services, Bob Debus, told the committee he would go ahead and build the prison by the end of 2001. A spokeswoman for the No New Women's Prison Campaign, Eileen Baldry, says the new prison is a "very simplistic response". "It is inappropriate to build a new prison just because there are more numbers or just because the prison conditions are poor," she says, " ... without looking at why the numbers have increased and looking at whether more prison beds are the best response, socially and economically. "Once you build new prison beds, all the evidence indicates that those beds will be filled by people from a very small sector of society - disadvantaged people and, in particular, Aboriginal people." At about the same time as the decision to build a prison, Corrective Services surveyed women prisoners. The interim report, not yet released, provides a picture of disadvantage. Seventy per cent of women surveyed did not complete Year 10 at school, more than 40 per cent have been repeatedly violently abused as children and 70 per cent violently abused as adults. Deborah's mother was mentally ill for most of her childhood. Homeless at age 12, she was made a ward of the State and detained in a juvenile centre, before being fostered to her older sister. She found a job but became involved in a violent relationship and the Department of Community Services removed her child. Deborah is in prison for armed robbery. She has applied to the Children's Court for access to her child but has no lawyer. Deborah is one of a minority of less than 40 per cent of women who are in prison for a violent crime. Most of these women have used violence to get money to feed an addiction to illegal drugs. Seventy per cent of all women prisoners see their imprisonment as linked to their use of alcohol or drug abuse. It costs the taxpayer more than $55,000 a year to keep each woman in prison, and that does not include services required for their children. The imprisonment of an extra 100 women during the past year will cost more than $5 million on top of the $42 million budgeted to build the new prison. The rapid increase in the number of women prisoners is the result of 20 years of failed social policy. Imprisonment as a last resort has been the litany of repeated inquiries but in practice our criminal justice system moves in the opposite direction. The 1978 Nagle Royal Commission found imprisonment should be used only as a last resort. Numbers continued to rise. A 1985 taskforce once again stressed that imprisonment should be a last resort but by 1987 numbers had doubled in less than a decade. There was another steep rise during the Coalition government between 1989 and 1991. By 1991 the number of imprisoned women had more than trebled in 13 years. The Carr Government was elected with a promise to make imprisonment a punishment of last resort, although the public rhetoric was law and order. The Labor Government has developed alternatives for women, including home and periodic detention centres, but this has not stemmed the rise in imprisonment. In March 1998 numbers dropped when fine defaulters were no longer sent to prison but then they started to climb quite steeply. The number of women prisoners grew from 290 to 443 in September last year. By August 1998, the Minister for Corrective Services had given the green light for a new women's prison. Asked why there is a need for a new women's prison, Debus emphasises his determination not to return to the pre-Labor Mulawa, where there was a high level of self-mutilation among the women. But even allowing for the need to replace outmoded facilities, why plan, at great cost, for 180 more women prisoners? Debus says the main reason there are more women in prison is that women are committing more violent crimes. The "major cause for the sharp increase in the full-time custody of women in the last 18 months is mostly to do with the fact that more women have been caught and convicted for fairly serious crimes". He is acting on the assumption that women are committing more serious crimes, rather than receiving harsher sentencing. To support Debus's argument, Corrective Services supplied The Sydney Morning Herald with a document based on its prison census last June, which highlights increases in the number of women imprisoned for robbery with major assault, major assault and other assault since 1995. The department concluded that there had been an increase in the number of "women committing and convicted of serious violent crimes". A more complex picture, which does not support Debus's assumptions, emerges from Corrective Services and NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research data. A comparison between the Corrective Services prison census for 1998 and '99 shows that while there has been a slight increase in the actual numbers serving sentences for assault or robbery, the proportion of women serving sentences for these crimes dropped. The three major crimes in both years were fraud, stealing without violence and drug offences, which accounted for more than 35 per cent in both years. Judges are getting tougher on women. Although fewer women were convicted of serious crimes in the higher courts in 1998 than 1994, the chances of convicted women going to prison have doubled. There has been an increase in convictions for robbery but so too have the chances of going to prison increased. More women are being convicted by the local courts, particularly for fraud, less serious assaults and unlawful possession of drugs. If convicted, women are more likely to go to prison. Between 1994 and '98, the number of women convicted of stealing without violence dropped by 13 per cent but the number of women imprisoned increased. During the same five years, the number of women convicted of less serious fraud (usually social security or credit card fraud) increased by 37 per cent but the number of women sentenced to prison nearly trebled. Debus also attributes the rise in the number of women prisoners to tighter administration of periodic detention. Nearly 15 per cent of women are in prison because they have failed to fulfill requirements of parole or periodic detention. Many of these women are addicted to drugs. Debus acknowledges that periodic detention was designed for "white-collar male criminals who have a wife at home to look after children". A 1997 standing committee Children of Prisoners report recommended that Corrective Services provide child-care facilities for women serving periodic detention. Corrective Services decided not to implement this recommendation on the grounds that it was not safe to have children with prisoners. This was not what was envisaged by the committee. Seventy per cent of women prisoners had sole care of more than two children before being sentenced. About 1,000 NSW children are affected by their mothers being in prison. The retired Labor MLC Anne Symonds, who chaired the Children of Prisoners inquiry, is disappointed at the Government's response to the report. "I just wish that the department would be more courageous in pursuing the recommendations, which were unanimous, because I believe ... the programs and policies are in the best interests of children. "There's an urgent need for the judiciary to be educated about the needs of the developing child because they have to recognise the consequences of their sentencing on the innocent child," she says. She cites a case where a judge gave a mother of a toddler a jail sentence for committing fraud after commenting that if a child was only two he wouldn't miss his mother. "There's a perception in the community that if in fact you've committed a crime, you're likely to be a bad mother - that's not borne out by evidence." The most important recommendation of the 1992 Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody was the need to reduce the numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people in prison. In NSW the opposite has occurred. Although Aboriginal women are less than 2 per cent of the population, 25 per cent of women imprisoned last year were Aborigines or Torres Strait Islanders. The number of Aboriginal women in prison has increased by 74 per cent since 1997. Comparative sentencing statistics for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women are kept only for the local courts. According to statistics supplied to the Herald by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, in 1998 Aboriginal women convicted by the local courts were almost twice as likely to go to prison, and for slightly longer, than non-Aboriginal women. Many of these women are under 25 and drug-addicted. Aboriginal women prisoners on remand have 20 per cent less chance of being bailed than non-Aboriginal women. The 1997 Children of Prisoners report found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were being sentenced to prison because there were no alternatives. Debus's official response to this recommendation was a reference to the NSW Law Reform investigation into the sentencing of disadvantaged prisoners, which was expected to publish a discussion paper in 1998. This report is not yet available. During the two years since the Children of Prisoners report, the number of Aboriginal women in prison has increased by a further 70 per cent. "The statistics speak for themselves," Eileen Baldry says. "How can any jurisdiction, anywhere in the world, justify that kind of over-representation?" A legal officer for the Law Reform Commission, Catherine Gray, says the investigation has found that Aboriginal women suffer "both race and sex discrimination". "Possibly there is some element of judicial paternalism ... if they have a stint in jail, they'll be well cared for, well fed," she says. "Probably there haven't been enough alternatives that will help them." She describes most of the offences as "crimes of poverty and social disadvantage". "Drug and alcohol abuse is a symptom of real underlying problems to do with discrimination, stolen generation and unemployment," she says. Senior Constable Sandra Brooks, who worked in Redfern before transferring to Campbelltown, talks from first-hand experience. An Aborigine herself, she believes "the trifecta" - assault, resisting arrest and offensive behaviour - is "used more often than it's warranted". "There might have been a bag snatch and there's been a description of the person on the radio ... and then you get those police who stop suspects based on the description ... and people minding their own business get stopped," she says. "There was one occasion where the sergeant says - 'oh, because you look like the type'." She says these types of situations escalate, leaving a feeling of antagonism between police and the Aboriginal community. Brooks believes jail is not the answer. "It's got to that stage where it's just an extension of where they live. It's no deterrent." She believes problems need to be tackled outside prison by specifically gearing services to the needs of Aboriginal women. "Aboriginal people will not access non-Aboriginal services for anything. If there's not an Aboriginal worker there they don't really feel they'll be understood." Most women prisoners hold little hope of staying out of prison. A health survey found nearly one-third of women prisoners had been hospitalised with mental problems at some stage of their lives and continued to inject drugs while in prison. Debus insists the Government has improved conditions. Yet a 1998 report showed that more than 40 per cent of women prisoners find the number of assaults in prison a problem and 60 per cent complained about the medical treatment. The Mum Shirl Unit at Mulawa caters for psychiatrically disturbed prisoners but even the acting governor of Mulawa, Judy Leyshon, says some of these women should not be in prison at all. Catt, who has recently been released, wants it to be different this time. She wants to stay off drugs, reclaim her two children and complete her studies. "You become more institutionalised. Each time I've noticed I find it difficult to cope with normal everyday things," she says. She is staying at Guthrie House, a halfway house that helps homeless women cope with the demands of daily life after prison. This house, which accommodates eight women, is the only one of its kind in NSW. "I think jail is a cop-out. I don't think it helps a lot of people," says Catt. "What made it different [this time] was somewhere to go - I had the desire [before] but I had no stepping stones or base so I was forced back into that lifestyle." This disadvantaged group of women needs services outside prison to help them cope better and without drugs. "[Labor] policy was absolutely clear that community organisations have a very important role to play in terms of ... post-release services and their capacity to deliver services which are immediate and within the community," says Baldry. Yet, in the 1999/2000 Budget non-government organisations have been granted $1.3 million out of a total Corrective Services budget of more than $460 million, a slight cut from the previous year. The NSW Government's new Drug Court, Drug Summit and battle over injecting rooms suggests a move towards seeing drug addiction as a health rather than a criminal problem. But while community services and low-income housing are starved for funds, money can be found for a bricks and mortar solution. "They've taken the easy solution," says Violet Roumeliotis of the Civil Rehabilitation Committee, which supports ex-prisoners. "Their actions fly in the face of Labor's policy of 1995. "It's not resources - Corrective Services had the biggest increase of any department in their budget - so it's where they're putting their resources," says Baldry. "If they wanted to use those resources differently, they could get far greater benefit for their dollar." Debus says community critics make him feel powerless. He says they are "inclined to blame the prison system when [they] ought to be paying more attention to the wider social conditions that end up with those locked vans arriving at prison gates". Corrective Services recently invited Baldry to be part of a new women's advisory network on the condition that she did not speak publicly about prisons. She replied that she could not accept this condition. Debus says the Government will revise plans for the new women's prison if the number of inmates decreases. But Symonds, a former Labor colleague, says that for this to happen a different approach is needed, providing support for women during and after prison. "Unfortunately, we leave most of this up to a group of people who are simply called custodial officers and they really should not be held responsible for that totality of operation." Corrective Services, DOCS, Health and Social Security need to share the load, she says. "It's just a matter of policy." The Legislative Council select committee will no doubt come up with answers to questions about why we increasingly use imprisonment to solve social problems. But like other inquiries, will it, too, gather dust? ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
