Queensland’s rate of imprisonment has recently undergone a reversal,
following several years of what appeared to be a declining trend. Contrary
to other states and territories, from 2002 to 2012 the rate of imprisonment
in Queensland from 168 to 159 prisoners per 100,000 adults. In 2013 this
trend reversed and by 2014 the rate had reached a 21% increase over the
2002 figure.
In addition, over this period Queensland Corrective Services (QCS) has
increasingly accommodated prisoners in high-security rather than
low-security prisons. In 2013, was at 93% compared to 63% in low-security
facilities.

The increase in prisoner numbers and greater use of high-security facilities
might seem to indicate that Queensland has recently become more
punitive, with tougher and longer sentences. However, evidence suggests at
least part of the rise in prison numbers may be due to the greater
proportion of offenders who return to prison either following or during a
period of supervision in the community.
For several years, Queensland has led other states and territories in these
kinds of returns to prison. For example, the showed that the state’s rate of
returns to prisons was 34.1% compared to the Australian average 24.8%.
Queensland’s rate of return was nearly nine percentage points higher than
second-placed NT.
What is driving the ‘revolving door’?
The recent rise in imprisonment is unlikely to be due to changes in the
state’s crime rate. Long-term crime trends over the past 12 years. And while
some might blame recent government policies, given their open promotion
of “get tough” strategies related to crime control and the picture is a bit
more complex than this.
One contributing factor is the increased use of court-ordered parole in
combination with decreased use of suspended sentences. The Corrective
Services Act 2006 (QLD) stated that parole would be the from prison. As a
result, other forms of gradual or conditional release from prison, including
work release, temporary absences or home detention, were no longer
available.
In traditional forms of parole, parole boards determine the date of release
following a period of good behaviour. Although this form of parole
continued to exist for offenders sentenced to terms of three years or more,
the Act introduced court-ordered parole for offenders who have committed
less serious offences and are sentenced to three years or less. In these cases,
courts set the date of parole release at sentencing and parole could begin at
any point. In effect, offenders could serve their entire sentence in the
community on parole.
The aim of court-ordered parole was ostensibly to increase the level of
supervision for offenders in the community. All sentenced offenders would
receive at least some level of supervision – though the intensity of this
supervision would vary. But court-ordered parole has also been to

suspended sentences by providing magistrates with a supervised
alternative.
However, evidence suggests that a large proportion of these offenders
either return to prison as a result of a breach, leading to suspension or
cancellation of the order, or after committing a new offence. For instance,
our research indicates that about one in four court-ordered parolees return
to prison on a new offence after a three-year follow-up, in contrast to about
one in ten board-ordered parolees.
The reality is that the often minimal level of supervision may increase the
amount of scrutiny without providing much of the kind of support that
offenders might require for successful re-entry.
The increasingly constricted level of funding and resources devoted to
community corrections might also contribute to this result. Funding
restrictions limit the nature and extent of supervision that parole officers
with growing caseloads can provide. They also reduce the availability of
post-prison programs.
Certainly changes in the “back-end” release policies – such as
court-ordered parole – may have contributed to a revolving-door situation
in which offenders frequently return to prisons. It is possible that the less
frequent use of suspended sentences contributed because parolees are more
closely monitored, increasing the detection of breaches. However,
researchers have found, to the contrary, that suspended sentences may
actually lead to a rise in the imprisonment rate.
Whatever the reason, the issue is to find some way to deal with the rising
trend, and especially with the high levels of offender breaches.
Community reparation and rehabilitation work best
Recent evidence demonstrates the importance of focusing on re-entry and
reparation in two important ways.
First, research has demonstrated the importance of sanctions that combine
punishment with programs that help re-establish the offender in the
community. These emphasise punishment in the community rather than
removal from society – and include a range of rehabilitative cSecond,
helping offenders find and keep work has been shown to promote offender
change. This contributes to successful re-entry to society. Investing in

prison training and programs as well as prisoner reentry programs reduces
the risk of re-offending.
In Queensland, where QCS has provided vocational and educational
training programs, evidence indicates very positive results. have fallen for
prisoners who enrol in these programs.
Our research shows the completion of in-prison vocational and educational
training. In a forthcoming publication, we show that these work programs
are important starting points for offenders to change their patterns of
behaviour, forging new non-offending identities.
These types of programs will make a difference in helping offenders
reintegrate by tackling the risk factors for offending.

If I were asked to outline a plan to ensure increasing incarceration, both
generally and of vulnerable groups, I would just point to the Northern
Territory of Australia. No need to ; there is only 623 per 100,000. The
NT sits at 847 per 100,000 adults, nearly four times that of its nearest
Australian rival, Western Australia.
Last year in the Territory, 86% of those in prison and 96% of those in
juvenile detention were Indigenous.
The daily average number of prisoners has more than doubled in the last 20
years. By 2010 the growth in the NT prison population necessitated the
construction of a 1,000-bed,With its opening, there is one prison bed for
every 103 adults. Despite a recent report of lower-than-anticipated
increases in prisoner numbers, based on growth over the last five years the
new jail will reach capacity by 2018.
Adopt punitive policing and sentencing policies
As with many jurisdictions, “tough on crime” rhetoric dominates in the
Territory. The mandatory sentencing regime introduced by the Country

Liberal Party in the 1990s kick-started significant growth in prisoner
numbers. Daily averages grew by
Despite early promise, including removing much of the mandatory
sentencing regime, the decade-long Labor government also contributed
significantly to these trends. Restrictive bail laws have increased numbers
in custody, with 38% of those entering an adult prison and 60% of those
entering youth detention unsentenced on reception.
The remaining mandatory sentencing provisions, for serious violence and
aggravated property offences, mean that prison is the only option available
in many cases.
And while undoubtedly more people are in prison, our community is
certainly not safer. Recorded assaultsThe ineffectiveness of jail in
addressing violent crime (indeed most crime) is also glaringly apparent
when they have served a previous prison term.
Deny Indigenous people access to appropriate services
Despite attempts to Close the Gap, Indigenous people living in remote areas
of the Territory do not enjoy access to the same services as non-Indigenous
people living in similarly sized communities.
Growing up in a town of 60 in rural Queensland, my family had access to a
range of government services. These included a post office, a permanently
staffed police station, a local primary school and a high school a short bus
ride away. I cannot think of a similarly sized Indigenous community
enjoying such facilities.
This lack of services has direct and indirect effects on rates of Indigenous
incarceration. Without identification requirements for a driver’s licence,
with no licensing or vehicle registration services and no public transport,
Indigenous people, far more so than non-Indigenous people, are jailed for
minor driving offences. While recent reforms have reduced these numbers,
a not insignificant number of Aboriginal people have a criminal record for
such offences.
Community-based orders are often unavailable in remote areas as there are
no programs or Correctional Services staff to supervise them. Due to
overcrowding and poor housing, Aboriginal offenders are also unlikely to
meet the suitability requirements of a Home Detention Order (HDO).
While access to in-prison programs is low overall, access to culturally

appropriate programs is even lower. With a few notable exceptions,
programs are developed using Western psychological models and evidence
about non-Indigenous offenders. Their suitability and success for
Indigenous offenders are rarely evaluated.
Yet it’s ironically true, as one senior Corrections official once remarked,
that it’s hard to see why we have special programs for Indigenous prisoners.
Indeed, Indigenous-specific programming is all that’s needed.
Embrace alcohol consumption as a core social value
If largely unfettered access to alcohol is to be a problem then Territorians
must accept that high levels of violence are here to stay. The association
between excessive alcohol consumption and violence is long established, At
least in the Territory are alcohol-related.
Public health education and evidence-based programs can play important
roles in reducing alcohol-related harm. While such programs should be
funded appropriately, supply restrictions must also form part of our
response.
The 2007 NT introduced identification requirements for alcohol purchases
above $100 but coupled this with criminalising those who consumed
alcohol on Aboriginal land. The Banned Drinker Register showed early
promise through a system that prevented alcohol purchases by those on
certain court orders, but partisan politics brought it to an end in 2012.
Ignore evidence of what works in child protection and
youth justice
Based on the growing body of evidence that child protection involvement,
even notification to a child welfare system, is linked to involvement in the
criminal justice system, there are increasingly troubled times ahead.
child protection notifications increased by 30% and the number of
Indigenous children in out-of-home care by 26%. At the same time, the rate
of completed child protection investigations decreased.
Youth justice fares equally badly. Diversionary programs are underfunded
and exclude young people without a responsible adult. There are few
programs for young people in detention or in the community, particularly
in areas such as violent and sexual offending.

The failure of governments to meet the need for a suitable youth facility
means young people are now locked up in a jail deemed unfit for adults;
Correctional Services described the facility as
Both systems are effectively driving young people’s further and deeper
involvement in the criminal justice system. Young people are remanded in
custody, sometimes for weeks, because no parent or family member comes
to court, yet child protection maintains the young person is not in need of
care.
Criminal charges are routinely brought against young people in residential
facilities, rather than working through behavioural issues as we might in
our own homes. Children in care have unpaid fines incurring interest and
attracting further penalty, with no way of paying off these debts.
I offer no solutions here. When we decide we want different outcomes – a
safer community, fewer people in jail – those solutions can be found in the
thousands of words spoken and written by dozens of Aboriginal people and
organisations, lawyers, academics and others, over many, many years.

Although criminal justice agencies in Australia have, in recent years,
adopted an increasingly , responses to crime that rely on punishment alone
have failed to make our communities Instead, they have produced an This
has the potential to and places considerable strain on government budgets.
Increasing prison sentences criminal behaviour. Longer sentences are
associated with higher rates of re-offending. When prisoners return to their
communities, as the vast majority inevitably do, the problems multiply.
Exposing the limitations of punishment
In this context, it becomes important to think carefully about public policy
responses that aim to punish and deter offenders. Psychologists have been
under well-controlled laboratory conditions with both animals and humans
for nearly 100 years. Its effectiveness in promoting short-term behavioural
change, or even in suppressing negative behaviour, depends on rather
specific conditions being in place.
For punishment to work it has to be predictable. Punishment also has to be
applied at maximum intensity to work, or else tolerance and temporary
effects result. Yet applying very intense levels of punishment for many
offences goes against our sense of justice and fairness.
The threat of punishment, no matter how severe, will not deter anyone who
believes they can get away with it. It will also not deter those who are too
overcome by emotion or care about the consequences of their behaviour.
Punishment also has to be immediate. Delayed punishment provides
opportunities for other behaviours to be reinforced. In reality, it often takes
months – if not years – for someone to be apprehended, appear in court
and be sentenced.

Working towards more effective rehabilitation
Many of the conditions required for punishment to be effective will not
exist in any justice system. It follows that policies and programmes that
focus on rehabilitating offenders will have a greater chance of success in
preventing crime and improving community safety.
The origins of offender rehabilitation in Australia can be traced back to the
early penal colonies and, in particular, a prison governor on Norfolk Island
in 1840. Maconochie introduced the idea of indeterminate rather than fixed
sentences, implemented a system of rehabilitation in which good behaviour
counted towards prisoners’ early release, and advocated a system of
aftercare and community resettlement.
Maconochie’s ideas built on those of the great social reformers of
18th-century Britain, notably Quakers such as They were among the first to
try to change prisons from what they called “institutions of deep despair
and cruel punishment” to places that were more humane and had the
potential to reform prisoners’ lives.
These days, though, offender rehabilitation is often thought about in terms
of psychological treatment. We can chart the rise of current programmes
according to the broad traditions of behaviour modification The earliest
therapeutic work in the psychoanalytic tradition saw delinquent behaviour
as the product of a failure in psychological development. It was thought this
could be addressed through gaining insight into the causes of offending. A
wide range of group and milieu therapies were developed for use with
offenders, including psychodrama.
There are good grounds to develop standardised incentive models in
Australia’s prisons. Community-style therapeutic programmes for prisoners
with substance use problems in Victoria, NSW and the ACT represent
substantial advances in practice.
These programmes take advantage of the significant therapeutic
opportunities that arise by looking closely at prisoners’ social functioning
and day-to-day interactions. They actively encourage offenders to assume
responsibility not only for their own behaviour, but for that of others.
However, rehabilitation today is almost always associated with
cognitive-behavioural therapy. This targets a relatively narrow range of
crime-producing (or “criminogenic”) needs, including pro-criminal
attitudes – those thoughts, values and sentiments that support criminal

conduct. Programmes also dedicate a lot of time to trying to change
personality traits, such as low self-control, hostility, pleasure- or
thrill-seeking and lack of empathy.
Not everyone can be successfully treated. Substantial evidence now exists,
though, to suggest that this type of approach does produce socially
significant reductions in re-offending.
Essential steps in making corrections policy work
The challenges lie in ensuring that the right programmes are delivered to
the right people at the right time.
First, it is important that low-risk offenders have minimal contact with
higher-risk offenders. Extended contact is only likely to increase their risk
of recidivism. This has implications for prisoner case management, prison
design and for the courts.
Courts have the power to divert low-risk offenders from prison and thus
minimise contact with more entrenched offenders. Related to this is the
need to develop effective systems of community-based rehabilitation,
leaving prisons for the most dangerous and highest-risk offenders.
Second, concerted efforts are required to develop innovative programmes
for those who identify with Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander cultural
backgrounds. They are across all levels of the criminal justice system.
Third, staff need to be properly selected, trained, supervised and resourced
to deliver the highest-quality rehabilitation services to the most complex
and challenging people.
Finally, it is important to demonstrate that programmes actually make
offenders better, not worse. The types of evaluation that are needed to
attribute positive change to programme completion are complex, require
large numbers of participants and cross-jurisdictional collaboration. A
national approach to programme evaluation is sorely needed.
This is not to suggest that criminal behaviour shouldn’t be punished – only
that we should not rely on punishment by itself to change behaviour. We
need to create a true system of rehabilitation that can enhance the
corrective impact of punishment-based approaches.
It also doesn’t mean that punishment never works. It may work reasonably
well with some people – perhaps those who are future-oriented, have good

self-monitoring and regulation skills, and who can make the connection
between their behaviour and negative consequences months later.
Unfortunately, many people in prison simply aren’t like this. The challenge,
then, is two-fold: to find ways to make punishment more effective and to
tackle the causes of offending through high-quality rehabilitation.
Correctional services often get little credit for their efforts. They are widely
criticised when things go wrong. However, their efforts to rehabilitate
offenders are not only sensible, but also cost-efficient and practical.
We need to support efforts to create a true system of rehabilitation. Such a
system will be comprehensive, coherent and internally consistent in
applying evidence-based practice at all levels.

Whatever might be said about its successes and failures, it’s clear that 25
years after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
Australia has become much less compassionate, more punitive and more
ready to blame individuals for their alleged failings.

Nowhere is this clearer than in our desire for punishment. A harsh criminal
justice system – in particular, more prisons and people behind bars – has
apparently become a hallmark of good government.
This wasn’t always the case. But it just so happened that the royal
commission handed down its findings at a time when the politics of law and
order was rapidly changing.
Reform to intolerance
The 1970s through to the late 1980s was a period of criminal justice reform.
Decriminalisation of certain types of summary offences, such as public
drunkenness and prostitution; a commitment to reducing prison numbers
through the introduction of community service orders and other
non-custodial sentencing options; the development of mental health
services for offenders; specific programs for women prisoners; and
improved conditions for prisoners more generally: these wereBut, by the
late 1980s and early 1990s, changing political conditions were of the
criminal justice system.
This move toward “law and order” responses manifested in:
There was the need for “tougher” penalties, often based on political
expediency and media-fuelled public alarm over particular crimes.
While these administrative, legal and technical changes contributed to
increasing prison numbers, they also reflected a less tolerant and more
punitive approach to crime and punishment.
Put bluntly, the last 25 years have seen a spectacle of punishment most
graphically illustrated in climbing imprisonment rates. And these changes
were directly in opposition to the fundamental findings of the royal
commission, which advocated a reduction in Indigenous imprisonment
rates.
Self-fulfilling practices
Such is the financial cost of our commitment to reducing re-offending, and
significantly contributes to the further marginalisation of those who are
incarcerated.
These increases in imprisonment in Australia have been paralleled in other
countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and,

more recently, Canada. It is this that has led these countries down the path
of a harsher approach to crime and punishment.
In contrast, European jurisdictions that have more social democratic and
corporatist forms of government have relied less on exclusionary and
punitive approaches to punishment.
But states that experienced a decline in principles and policies reflecting the
welfare state and embraced neoliberal notions had a realignment of values
and approaches that emphasised “deeds over needs”.
Their focus shifted from rehabilitative goals to an emphasis on deterrence
and retribution. Individual responsibility and accountability increasingly
became the core of the way justice systems responded to offenders.
Privatisation of institutions and services; widening social and economic
inequality; and new or renewed insecurities around fear of crime,
terrorism, “illegal” immigrants and racial, religious and ethnic minorities
have all impacted the way their criminal justice systems operate.
Human warehouses
In understanding the use of imprisonment, one of the most important
points to grasp is that a rising imprisonment rate is not directly or simply
related to an increase in crime.
The use of prison is a function of government choices; it reflects
government policy and legislation, as well as judicial decision-making.
Imprisonment rates in Australia are, since increases in imprisonment rates
have continued while crime rates have levelled or fallen in many categories
of crime from 2000. Similar patterns The growth of the law-and-order
agenda has also resulted in far weaker ideological differentiation between
major political parties on criminal justice policy. The most politically
expedient response to crime is the promotion and implementation of the
“toughest” approach.
While conservative political parties may have traditionally appeared to be
“tougher” on crime and punishment, many Australian states and territories,
such as New South Wales.

What’s your zombie apocalypse survival plan?”
The question invites the liveliest discussions of the semester. I teach a
course on social movements in fiction and film at West Virginia University,
where George Romero’s first film, “Night of the Living Dead,” is on the
syllabus. The film was groundbreaking in its use of horror as political
critique. Half a century later, Romero’s films are still in conversation with
racial politics in the United States, and Romero’s recent death calls for
reflection on his legacy as a filmmaker.
Disquieted times

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, an English professor and at George Washington
University, that “Like all monsters, zombies are metaphors for that which
disquiets their generative times.”

Romero shot “Night of the Living Dead” in 1967, when Americans’ attention
was focused on powerful televised images of race riots in cities like Newark
and Detroit, and on the Vietnam War, the likes of which were Romero
reimagined scores of bleeding faces, twisted in rage or vacant from trauma,
as the zombie hoard. He filtered public anger and anxieties through the
hoard, reflecting what many viewed as liberals’ rage and disappointment
over a lack of real social change and others saw as conservatives’ fear over
disruptions in race relations and traditional family structures. This is the
utility of the zombie as a political metaphor – it’s flexible; there is room
enough for all our fears.
In “Night of the Living Dead,” an unlikely cross-section of people are
cornered in a farmhouse by a zombie hoard. They struggle with each other
and against the zombies to survive the night. At the end of the film, black
protagonist Ben Huss is the sole survivor. He emerges from the basement
at daybreak, only to be mistaken for a zombie and shot by an all-white
militia. The militiamen congratulate each other and remark that Huss is
“another one for the fire.” They never realize their terrible error. Perhaps
they are inclined to see Huss as a threat to begin with, because he is black.
At the start of Romero’s next film, “Dawn of the Dead,” in which another
unlikely bunch faces off against zombies in a shopping mall, police
surround a public housing building. One officer remarks on the unfairness
of putting blacks and Hispanics in these “big-ass fancy hotels” and proceeds
to shoot residents indiscriminately, not distinguishing between the living
and the undead.
The officers are shooting to restore the “natural order” in which the dead
stay dead. But their actions also restore the prevailing social order and the
institutions that create and reinforce racial inequality.
Zombie revival
In my class, I connect these scenes of dehumanization to contemporary
racial politics, using them as a springboard for conversations about racially
motivated police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement. These
discussions focus on the zombie as a dehumanized creature.
In returning from the dead, zombies lose their human essence – their
agency, critical reasoning capacities, empathy and language. As Cohen
said, “Zombies are a collective, a swarm. They do not own individualizing
stories. They do not have personalities. They eat. They kill. They shamble.
They suffer and they cause suffering. They are dirty, stinking, and poorly

dressed. They are indifferent to their own decay.” Zombies retain a human
form, but lose their individuality and are dehumanized in their
reanimation.
Minority victims of police shootings are often portrayed in the media as
dangerous, animalistic and even monstrous – meaning they, too, argue
that perceptions of humanity are a critical part of social cognition – the way
we process or think about other people and social settings. When we see
people or groups as less than human, predictable consequences arise.
Romero’s films tune us in to our own potential for dehumanization.
Zombie psychology
relaxes our moral restrictions on doing harm to others and ultimately
facilitates against them. When people see members of a group as an
undifferentiated “hoard,” they’re susceptible to the same error as the
militiamen in “Night of the Living Dead.” When they couple
dehumanization with hatred, resentment or fear, they become like the
resentful police officer in “Dawn of the Dead.” Dehumanization of black
Americans underpins the violence perpetrated against them in Romero’s
films and in America today.
Dehumanization isn’t confined to police violence. shows that
dehumanization of Muslims and Hispanics underlies support for restrictive
immigration policies and a border wall. It also undercuts support for aid to
refugees.

Nightlife precincts in Australian cities have come under intense scrutiny in
recent years following a spate of “one punch” assaults and other incidents.
Places like Sydney’s Kings Cross, Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley and Perth’s
Northbridge have been framed as unsafe and unruly “problem spaces” – the
kind of places that parents warn their teenage children to avoid.

The championing and criticism of nightlife spaces create something of a
paradox. On the one hand, the promotion of vibrant nightlife spaces may be
seen as an invitation to people to revel and consume. It’s thought that
failing to attract enough people to these spaces spells economic disaster for
venue operators and for the city itself.
On the other hand, violence and fear discourage or exclude people from
participating in nightlife. And labelling nightlife precincts as disorderly or
“out of control” stigmatises these spaces and revellers, leading to more
exclusion.
The policy challenge is to establish the right amount and types of regulation
so that nightlife spaces allow for mild transgression in a safe environment.

When security excludes
Part of the response to these issues has been tighter regulation and security
in nightlife spaces. “Lockout laws” were introduced in parts of Sydney,
following the example set in the trials in Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane.
These laws wound back the operating hours of licensed venues in popular
night-time precincts.

Other responses from governments and private operators have included
expanding CCTV surveillance, introducing ID scanners at venue entrances,
increasing police and private security presence, and slowing or suspending
the issuing of new liquor licenses.
These measures are intended to make people safer and to make
them feel safer, to reduce the exclusionary effect of fear. Ironically, these
hyper-visible forms of security can in fact make people These regulatory
interventions are more than just about tackling violence and threatening
behaviour. Ultimately, they are about imposing particular ideas of social
and moral order not only within nightlife spaces but the city more broadly.

Gentrifying the night
Alongside the expansion of hyper-visible security, major public and private
investment has flowed into nightlife precincts and surrounding areas over
the last decade or so.
These developments have Northbridge, which has been gradually
gentrifying. The rapid rise in the number of small boutique bars, high-end
restaurants and apartments is evidence of this.
The gentrification of Northbridge and other nightlife precincts across
metropolitan Australia – whether through new “sophisticated” venues
replacing older downmarket ones, or through displacing nightlife
altogether – is not a recipe for less exclusionary spaces. Rather, these
developments produce a different kind of exclusion due to two factors.
First, certain groups may be priced out of more upmarket venues offering
an “exclusive” or “sophisticated” experience. Second, these venues and the
types of customers they attract can make other individuals and groups feel
out of place. If they don’t fit the written and unwritten admission criteria
they may be denied entry altogether.
Making space for transgression
In reshaping the moral geography of nightlife precincts, securitisation and
gentrification are suppressing one of the fundamental appeals of nightlife –
the opportunity for behaviour that transgresses social, cultural and even
legal codes.

Participating in nightlife spaces in cities has been a way to briefly escape
the often-mundane orderliness of everyday home and work life. Nightlife
spaces have historically been important for minority, subcultural and
countercultural groups – minority ethnic groups, punks, goths, and so on –
to socialise and to express their individual and collective identities.
The increasingly expensive cost and overbearing regulatory regimes
governing nightlife seem designed to attract the “right type” of people and
to make them feel safer.
The risk of all this is that we might be sleepwalking into the creation of
sanitised and yet more homogeneous and exclusionary nightlife spaces.

There has been a rise in global statistical initiatives that measure and rank
countries in terms of various aspects of the human condition. Some of the
more prominent examples include the World Governance, the Global Peace
and the Corruption Perceptions
Each ranks countries according to a series of indicators, or a composite
indicator, and tracks their progress or decline over time.
One of the most recent global indicator projects is the It ranks 142
countries based on a perception survey relating to personal safety and
policing, from a representative sample of 1000 people in each country.
Knowing how secure, or insecure people feel is important because
insecurity affects economic growth and undermines development.
According to the recently released 2018 South Africa ranks high in the
insecurity index – 137 out 142 countries. This means that South Africans
would have expressed high levels of insecurity as well as fear that they were
likely to, or had already, fallen victim to crime.
The ranking suggests that South Africans consider themselves to be more
insecure, and having lower levels of confidence in the police, compared to
people in Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central
African Republic (CAR), Libya and Mali. These are all unstable states
affected by violent conflict and high levels of instability.
This is surprising given that South Africa is not in a state of armed conflict
and is relatively stable. The possible reason for such a questionable ranking
is that the survey, like many global perception surveys, doesn’t adequately
account for the extent to which people will provide unreliable information
about sensitive issues. To improve accuracy, surveys like this should factor
in differences in context.
The rankings
The rankings are based on an index score derived from responses to the
following questions:

● In the city or area where you live, do you have confidence in the local police
force?
● Do you feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where you live?
● Within the last 12 months, have you had money or property stolen from you
or another household member?
● Within the past 12 months, have you been assaulted or mugged?
It’s undeniable that South Africa has high levels of insecurity and
interpersonal crime. And, there’s a significant trust deficit between citizens
and the police.
Ranking South Africa below the DRC, Mali and Libya is also questionable
given that the security forces and militias in those countries have been
widely regarded as predatory and highly abusive.
So what’s missing?
Context
Firstly, context is key.
A key shortcoming of using survey data about crime and insecurity to
construct indices and rankings is that people won’t always reply to
questions honestly and accurately.
To improve the accuracy of indices like this, it would be advisable to
develop a quantifiable weighting for the reliability of crime and insecurity
survey data for each country, and then apply the weighting to the overall
index score. For example, in countries with more authoritarian
governments, respondents are likely to under report their levels of trust in
the police and sense of personal insecurity.
Applying a reliability weighting would adjust the overall insecurity index
score to better reflect people’s lived reality. Such a weighting can be
developed by including additional questions in the survey, for example
about how willing respondents are to talk to strangers about sensitive
information, including views about their governments.

Just last week, the significance was given to Akon Guode, a mother who
killed three of her children after driving her car into a lake in Melbourne.
The main reason for the 81⁄2 year sentence reduction was that the trial
judge had not sufficiently taken Guide’s major depression into account.
While the circumstances of this offence were unusual, it is for offenders to
have mental health problems. have shown that almost half of Australian
prison entrants report being affected by a mental disorder. With that in
mind, how are mental health issues taken into account during the criminal
justice process?
Where this happens, the sentencing judge must decide whether to take the
offender’s mental health problems into account. There will be a sentencing
hearing, in which evidence of the offender’s mental health condition will be
presented. The judge must consider this evidence, as well as the relevant
sentencing principles, in reaching a verdict.

1. It may reduce an offender’s “moral culpability” or
   blameworthiness for the offence.
   This will only be the case where there was a link between the mental health
   condition and the offence. For example, the condition may have impaired
   the offender’s ability to think clearly about the offending behaviour. In such
   circumstances, there is less need to denounce the relevant conduct or to
   punish the perpetrator as harshly.
2. A mental impairment may affect the that is imposed or its
   conditions.For example, it may provide a reason for or for requiring an
   offender to get
3. The offender’s mental health condition may make him or her
   an unsuitable vehicle for sending a deterrent message to the
   community.
   One circumstance in which this may be the case is where the offender’s
   condition is likely to attract community
4. The offender’s mental impairment may make it inappropriate
   to send him or her a deterrent message.
   One of these is where the offender has an impaired capacity to learn from
   the court’s statements.
5. An offender’s mental health condition may result in
   punishment weighing more heavily on him or her than it would
   on a person in normal health.
   This provides a reason for reducing the level of punishment.
6. There may be a serious risk that imprisonment would cause a
   deterioration in the offender’s mental health.
   This also provides a basis for imposing a more lenient sanction.
   While not included in the Verdins principles, mental health problems may
   also affect an offender’s perceived prospects for This will often depend on
   whether the relevant condition is considered treatable.
   Each of these principles is mitigating – they point towards a more lenient
   sentence being given. However, it is also possible for a mental health
   condition to point towards the need for a more severe sentence. This will be
   the case where the community is seen to require protection from the
   offender due to that condition. the offender’s condition may be considered
   untreatable, and his or her criminal behaviour unlikely to change as a
   result.
   It will sometimes be the case that an offender’s mental health condition will
   provide reasons for both reducing and increasing an offender’s sentence. In
   such cases, the judge will need to balance all of the conflicting
   considerations and determine the most appropriate sentence.
   The Verdins principles apply to any kind of mental disorder or abnormality,
   and have been used for offenders suffering from schizophrenia, depression
   and bipolar disorder.

All instances of criminal law-making (or promising) deserve scrutiny –
especially if they raise concerns that politicians might be politicising the law
for electoral advantage. However, it would be a mistake to assume this is
the only way criminal laws are made.
We are part of a examining how, when and why criminal laws are made.
What drivers and processes sit behind the moment when an
attorney-general stands up in parliament and introduces a new bill? And
how do we assess what makes a good process?
So far, we’ve found there is a stark difference between the careful
evidence-based, deliberative and consultative processes associated with the
criminal law’s use against some harms – like domestic violence – and the

“urgent” non-consultative law-making with others – like terrorists and
outlaw motorcycle gangs.
Recently in NSW, we saw an interesting variation on the familiar law and
order auction. In the second last parliamentary sitting week for 2018, the
Berejiklian government launched something of a pre-emptive strike ahead
of the state election in March 2019. In the space of three days, the NSW
parliament enacted . Here we highlight some examples illustrating the
diversity of ways criminal laws get made.
introduces a number of reforms aimed at keeping the community safe,
including from the risk of terrorism and other high-risk offenders,
bushfires, child abuse and the supply of drugs causing death.
Here, a diverse range of harms are “knitted” together through a narrative of
community fear, anxiety and need for protection. Despite these common
themes, the changes to the criminal law made by this bill have different
origins.
For example, the introduction of higher penalties for lighting bushfires was
influenced by what’s been happening in other states, and a determination
to “keep up”. As the attorney-general put it: this will “ensure that the New
South Wales penalty is now the equal toughest in the country”.
The same bill also increased penalties for the crime of concealing a child
abuse offence – a crime introduced in June this year following
recommendations of thethat this amendment, just six months later, was
because the government had:
listened to the voices of the more than 13,000 people who signed a petition
calling for tougher maximum penalties for the concealment of child abuse
offences.
He thanked Dolly’s parents who had “worked tirelessly, campaigning and
raising awareness about the potentially devastating effects of bullying and
cyberbullying”.
When many countries are grappling with it is timely to reflect on how the
community figures in these examples: victims whose loss is the catalyst for
change; a collective of persons in need of protection; and law-makers. The
NSW attorney-general some recent criminal law changes as “citizen law
that if individual citizens lobby hard enough and speak to politicians they
can effect change”. He hoped that “in some small way this will restore some

people’s confidence in our democracy and the ability of citizens to effect
change”.

This is very different from the law and order duties of the police. The
principle of minimum force is alien to a soldier. As the chief of South
African National Defence Force General Solly Shoke, recently stated, the
army is trained to “skiet and donner” (“shoot and beat up”), The South
African government appears to have had little choice but to use the military
as the country’s police have been unable to protect citizens against violent
crime. A staggering 43 people were killed in Cape Town Deploying soldiers

may be effective in suppressing violence. Nevertheless, studies show that
using the military in an internal role can exacerbate conflict,
Soldiers are trained to kill
Military training and culture instils in soldiers a particular disposition
which shapes and guides their actions and behaviour. Aggressiveness and
an ability enables soldiers to deal with life-or-death situations and perform
acts that are otherwise considered abhorrent in civilian society.
Nor can the military identity of a soldier – who carries a machine gun
rather than a pistol – be switched off by merely placing them in policing
roles, without some degree of re-socialisation and training. The deployment
of the military, announced by Police Minister Bheki Cele last Thursday,The
soldiers need to receive proper training on police rules and conduct before
they can be deployed. Without this they wouldn’t know how to react when
confronted with heavily armed gang members.
The soldiers will be under the crime fighting operation. But differences in
organisational cultures, procedure and equipment, could prove to be highly
problematic. In addition, unlike the police, the military is typically
unfamiliar with the terrain, street conditions, public attitudes and reactions
of civilians.
Whether or not the deployment succeeds will depend on the conduct of the
military, their methods of coercion and whether they act in an impartial
and professional manner. The rules of engagement need to be very clear to
ensure that they do not use excessive force, or violate the human rights of
citizens.
Parameters must be set to ensure that the use of force is proportional to the
threat posed to contain a situation. Force should only be used when all
other means have failed, and where there is evidence of hostile intent. And,
such use of force should be of limited duration, and only employed as a
protective measure.
Threat of militarisation
The last thing the country can afford is a return to what happened during
the apartheid era, when citizens were at the mercy of the state security
forces, with hardly any There are also wider social ramifications. On the
one hand, failure to intervene by the state may result in citizens forming
their own armed groups that offer them Any increase in vigilantism has the

potential to further escalate violence, as citizens come toOn the other hand,
further calls to deploy the military throughout the country could foster a
culture of militarism. This, in turn, could be linked to broader social
processes of militarisation within society at the economic,On the economic
level, militarisation is associated with the increased spending on defence.
At the political level, the involvement of the army in law and order duties
can result in them being afforded Ideologically, this can an already
established culture of violence as an effective means of achieving objectives.
Where there is a culture of resorting to the use of force to restore peace and
security, it undermines the need to seek other alternatives. Nor does it
address the underlying causes of conflict, which ultimately results in the
military being deployed for prolonged periods, or even permanently, to
prevent the return to violence.

The initial response to the recent deployment of the South African army to
areas of Cape Town hit hard by gang violence evoked relief that peace and
stability would be But this has been replaced with a much more nuanced
view. Some community leaders claim the deployment has fallen well short
of . The “lock-down operation” needed to target and identify the culprits
behind the violence has not occurred.
Despite their limited mandate, the army has just too few soldiers to patrol
the ten suburbs that are home to. Less than 300 soldiers are on the streets
of the Cape Flats, not the 1320. This figure allows for rotation of troops.
Also, the soldiers will be there for less than three months, as the
deployment is authorised The result is that people in the affected areas are
fast realising that This echoes previous cases were soldiers were deployed
to but failed to have a measurable impact.
But, even if more soldiers are requested, the South African National
Defence Force simply doesn’t have the capacity to deploy them. This is
because it is severely overstretched in terms of both personnel and Of the
37 000 in the army, less than half serve in the 14 infantry battalions. One
battalion is tied up in peacekeeping operations and 15 companies are
deployed on the borders (far short of the 22 required). Some military
analysts claim that the army is 8.5 infantry battalions short (roughly 8500
members)
The result is an escalation in personnel expenditure, the retention of people
who are no longer fit for their post profile due to age and health, a high
ratio of general officers to other ranks, and rank inflation making the armed
forces top heavy. Senior ranks are very expensive with extensive salary and
pension costs.

Added to this the military has been unable to reduce the number of people
in the full-time force through rationalisation and Another challenge is the
age profile. In 2003 the defence force introduced the military skills
development programme to rejuvenate the full-time and reserve forces. The
programme was to provide an adequate number of young, fit and healthy
personnel for the full time forces; and to serve as a feeder for the Reserve
Force. This has not happened due to financial restraints and lack of career
planning, leaving the reserves The consequence is an ageing force with
average troop age of 38 years and the Reserve Force age of .
Redesigning the defence force
The other factor affecting the capacity of the military is its force design. The
South African National Defence Force is structured, funded and trained for
its primary, Using the military continuously in internal secondary roles has
stretched it beyond capacity and contributed to its There is a clear
“disconnect between the defence mandate, government expectation and If
the government is serious about providing security for its citizens, it is
crucial to fix the structure and design of the force, which have eroded its
capacity to function optimally. Failure to do so will have dire implications
for the defence force’s ability to carry out its mandate – to protect the
country and its citizens as required by the Constitution.

Their protest actions may make us feel uncomfortable, annoyed or worse.
But it is important that the general public understands the reasoning that
underpins civil disobedience and why this radical strategy is being deployed
this week.
Law-abiding citizens are right to be concerned about others deliberately
breaking the law to advance their social, political or environmental goals.
But many of the most significant social and political advances over the past
century owe much to that relied on this tactic. Think of Gandhi’s
independence movement against British rule in India, the suffragette fight
for the right of women to vote and the US civil rights movement.
These precedents raise the question: might future societal advances also
demand peaceful acts of civil disobedience?
Civil disobedience: the case for and against
the basic theory of democracy is that we vote on who represents us in
government. In this way, democratic societies are said to have created the
institutions and processes needed for their own peaceful improvement.
So critics of civil disobedience argue that people shouldn’t just break the
law because they disagree with it. They say if you do not like a policy or law,
you are free to campaign for change, say citizens do not always owe
political allegiance to laws and policies that are not produced through fair,
robust, and representative democratic processes.
t. This was the view advanced by American writer and philosopher Henry
David Thoreau in his 1849 essay which inspired both Gandhi and Martin
Luther King Jr.

When a law or policy is clearly unfair, a case can be made that there is a
place for civil disobedience. We must accept that even laws produced in a
democracy get it wrong sometimes.
Will Extinction Rebellion fall on the right side of history?
The Extinction Rebellion is promoting civil disobedience because it says
across the world, governments have failed to respond adequately to
the and the steep decline in . It argues that the political system
underpinning this failure must be resisted, even if this causes
inconvenience to the general public.
The movement’s supporters include 250 Australian academics who saying
they feel a “moral duty” to rebel and “defend life itself”.
It could be argued that the activists should wait until governments take
action. But judging by recent history – including a – an adequate, timely
global response to the climate crisis seems In this case, waiting for
government action means being complicit in an unjust system.
Some people will inevitably dismiss Extinction Rebellion protesters as
troublemakers and criminals. But their actions must be assessed against
them. The world’s best climate scientists believe that if global warming is
not kept below the 1.5°C limit, Earth’s natural and human systems will
suffer dire consequences. The legitimacy of Extinction Rebellion’s
disobedience must be weighed against the wrongs that triggered it.
As Extinction Rebellion causes chaos in our cities, we must avoid
superficial, knee jerk reactions. Whatever your views on civil disobedience,
the climate emergency would be far less serious if governments had taken
action decades ago. Further inaction will only lead to more numerous and
active drives driven by the same mixture of love and rage that provoked
Extinction Rebellion.

Geographic, cultural differences
Considering that populations may be widely dispersed among urban areas
and rural, remote and very remote areas, it’s reasonable to consider
whether these geographic and cultural differences impact how people view
the role of punishment in the criminal justice system.

To explore this, we examined data from 2004, 2008, 2011 and 2015, and
compared variations in answers from urban and rural respondents to a
number of questions dealing with attitudes towards crime and punishment.

The first question asked respondents: “What is the BEST way to deal with
young offenders who commit violent crime?” Those from rural
communities favoured punishing violent young offenders significantly more
than those from urban areas:
The second question asked respondents to indicate their agreement or
disagreement with the following statement: “We must crack down on crime,
even if that means that criminals lose their rights.”
While both rural and urban respondents favoured limiting the rights of
offenders in the name of being tougher on crime, support from rural
communities was significantly greater than those from urban areas:
The third question asked respondents: “Do you favour or oppose the death
penalty for people convicted of murder?” On this query, rural support of the
death penalty was significantly greater than it was in urban communities:
Rural communities ‘more punitive’
We then combined these questions and answers into an index in order to
have a more comprehensive measurement of punitive attitudes. This index
clearly showed that, when all measurements were taken together, rural
communities were significantly aligned with the “more punitive” category
and urban communities with the “less punitive.”
The next phase of this study, which is currently underway, will
consider why those who live in rural areas are so much more punitive than
city-dwellers.

Urban-rural divide in Canada
Our study also highlights that attitudes towards crime and how to control it
may be a central component of these political differences.
For example, we found that there is a significant trend towards a decrease
in punitive attitudes in Canada as a whole. But those from urban areas are
driving that reduction, and the gap between rural and urban communities
on questions of crime appears be growing:
This suggests that we should consider how political values inform attitudes
towards crime and punishment, and how these attitudes themselves

contribute to growing political divisions between rural and urban
communities.

The assassination of political figures in South Africa has a long and horrible
history. That the practice has continued since the country became a
democracy is deeply disturbing.
by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime between
2000 and 2017 ranked one province in South Africa – KwaZulu-Natal –
well ahead of the other eight provinces in killings of people in the political
sphere and the taxi industry.
I have conducted on political violence in the province since 1983. My work
has been of a qualitative nature, using information obtained from my own
research networks, interventionist work with the police, and media reports.
My work, among other things, confirms the close links between political
and taxi violence in the province, with taxi hitmen often deployed in
political attacks. It is a cause for great concern that despite the availability
of information about such activities, little progress has been made in
bringing perpetrators to justice.
According to my statistics, around 90 people with some official standing
have been killed in KwaZulu-Natal since 2015. They were either municipal
councillors, political party officials or, in a few cases, senior municipal
officials. Most of the deceased were affiliated to the African National
Congress (ANC), the party that governs both the province and the country.
No transparency
The inter-ministerial task team investigating the political killings started
work on over 100 dockets in mid-2018. Over a year later, the only known
high profile conviction for any of the 90 murders I documented was secured
by KwaZulu-Natal detectives in March 2019 for a 2016 murder.
There may well have been convictions for the murders of less well known
victims in regional courts which have not been reported. But none have
been reported for the many prominent victims during this period.
From my personal experience, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain
information from the South African Police Service about progress in
criminal investigations.
I have also experienced a lack of transparency relating to the structure of
the task team itself, including who commands it.

I have been able to establish that many people have been arrested. Some
have been released without being charged while others have had charges
withdrawn after appearing in court.
.
A number of examples of high profile cases – some of which were included
in the dockets taken by the task team – show how the justice system is
failing to conclude cases. These include:

Evaluating task team performance
These high profile arrests, followed by subsequent withdrawal of charges,
have led to charges by the provincial ANC and the South African
Communist Party of political partisanship In the absence of empirical
evidence to substantiate claims by the minister of police about convictions
secured by this team, the inevitable conclusion is that their deployment is a
waste of scarce criminal justice resources.

As students’ undergraduate careers come to an end, many are realizing that they will not meet
their goal of having a job lined up before graduation. For some, this may represent the very
first time they did not reach an important milestone they had set out to achieve. For those
who will be graduating this spring or summer, the media is brimming with stories about the
current climate for job seekers and many offer advice about driving an effective job search
campaign. Early careerists seeking a first job have a busy, stressful journey ahead.
Cultivating resilience is essential, as students and grads must prepare for both the positive
actions and negative outcomes that they will likely experience. Developing a framework for
resilience is as integral a part of the job-search process as establishing strategies for seeking
out appropriate roles and opportunities, and expanding their network.
Why is this so important? A career search process will inevitably consist of both positives
and negatives. Job-seekers will experience the triumph of identifying opportunities, creating
applications, and generating interest in their background. But they will also have to deal with
never hearing back about an application, being turned down, and not receiving constructive
feedback. And unfortunately, job-seekers should anticipate that this mix is 90/10, meaning
90% of the search will consist of non-productive, disappointing energy zappers.
Create a Personal Job Search Strategy
One must understand this reality while creating an individualized plan to counteract the low
points and build resilience. Here are some tips:
Mix it up
It is absolutely valuable to have a routine or daily discipline built into your job-search
process, as you need structure. But you should also mix it up, as if you are cross-training for a
sport. If yesterday was spent 100% on networking, make today’s focus industry and
company research. Or, if today you completed five job applications, use time tomorrow to
reach out to people on applications submitted a few weeks ago.

Micro-Actions Make Things Manageable
If any step of the job search seems overwhelming, be sure to break things into digestible steps
or micro-actions. Micro-actions build momentum and energy. Perhaps reviewing an entire
network of 500 contacts to pick people to reach out to seems like a daunting task – so cherry
pick five people that you find interesting and get underway. If filling in one more application
feels scream-worthy, start by only setting up a username and password. Take a walk, and then
come back to complete the rest. Just as a student creates a plan of small steps to prepare for
finals, creating outlines and developing study tools before writing an essay or preparing for a
test, job-seekers benefit from using micro-actions to create a more manageable process.
Build your new community
If you’ve returned home after graduation, approach it as if you just moved to a new city.
Create an infrastructure, as you are used to this from your college years, offering support,
discipline and motivation. Find issues that you care about and work to address them. Seek out
opportunities to volunteer, and work to be an active leader in these organizations. Your
involvement builds new skills and broadens your network with local leadership.
Enlist your troops
Actively enlist the support from family and friends as part of this strategy. Ask for help.
Share specific goals and request that family members check in with you regarding positive
tasks: “How many job applications did you complete today?” “Did you see any new
companies that you might be interested in applying to?”
While families can be sympathetic about the negative outcomes that impact a job seeker,
keep their energy focused on the controllable steps to maintain momentum.
The Gift of Support
If you are the family member of a disappointed job-seeker, recognize the reality of search
process dynamics and acknowledge that the 90% negative zone is hard work. The job search
is like training for a marathon – so rather than focusing on the award medal, ask “How many
miles did you log today?” Family members can certainly contribute to positive tasks as well,
such as building networks and assisting with searches for companies and roles.
Parents or grandparents should also consider the gift of professional guidance and support.
Arranging for career counseling or career assessment tools can be hugely beneficial if a loved
one is puzzled about mapping out meaningful career options; or needs help building a
comprehensive strategy, being accountable as well as executing the necessary tasks with
finesse and prowess.