Justice Reinvestment : Reducing Women’s Imprisonment ?

1. Justice Reinvestment : Reducing Women’s Imprisonment ? Julie Stubbs

2. Australia’s Imprisonment Rate 6% increase from 2014-2015 Source: Weatherburn 2016

3. Overall rates Australian Prison Rates 2015 Male • Indigenous rate 4091 • non-Indigenous rate 274.5 • (15 x) Female • Indigenous rate 460.9 • non-Indigenous rate 20.2 • (22 x) 196 per 100,000 adult population Males 365.7 Females 30.7

4. Australian Prison Data as at 30 June 2015 (ABS 2016) 27% unsentenced 7.9% female 27% Indigenous (cf 2% of population) n = 36,134

5. Changes in Australia’s prison population 2014 to 2015

6. Trends in NSW

7. Justice Reinvestment Original vision ‘The goal of justice reinvestment is to redirect some portion of the $54 billion America now spends on prisons to rebuilding the human resources and physical infrastructure – the schools, healthcare facilities, parks, and public spaces – of neighbourhoods devastated by high levels of incarceration (Tucker & Cadora 2003: 2).

8. US experience: from JR to JRI Shift from: reinvestment in high incarceration communities to: high performing community safety strategies

9. JR for women? Economic focus on $ savings – are women too few to count? ‘Evidence based’ approach - what counts as evidence? What works – is this consistent with women’s pathways to offending, desistance? Social determinants of incarceration? Interventions – front-end or back-end; individual or community level? Risk assessment tools - conceptual flaws and questions about validation for women and minorities Outcome measures – at individual level (re-offending, measures of well being?); what measures at community level?

10. Some challenges in shaping JR for women Keeping a focus on women Social justice Will a place-based approach assist women? Measuring what matters Engaging with communities Challenging factors that exacerbate gendered insecurity and contribute to high incarceration

11. Systemic effects Much of the research on the effects of incarceration has focused on individual-level outcomes for formerly incarcerated individuals and sometimes their families. Yet because of the extreme social concentration of incarceration, the most important effects may be systemic, for groups and communities’ ((US) National Research Council of the National Academies, 2014, p355)

12. Social policy ‘In the domain of justice, empirical evidence by itself cannot point the way to policy’.. normative principles are needed Reducing high levels of incarceration is not just about penal policy, but also about social policy (National Research Council of the National Academies 2014)

13. References Brown, D., Cunneen, C., Schwartz, M., Stubbs, J. and Young, C (2015) Justice reinvestment: Winding back imprisonment Palgrave Macmillan. National Research Council of the National Academies (2014) The Growth in Incarceration in the United states: Exploring Causes and Consequences http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/claj/growth_of_incarceration/ Tucker, S and Cadora (2003) Justice reinvestment, Ideas for an Open Society 3(3) NY, Open Society Institute. Weatherburn, D (2016) “Rack ‘em, Pack ‘em and Stack ‘em”: Decarceration in an Age of Zero Tolerance , Paper for theLegal Aid Criminal Law Conference, Sydney.