BOB DEBUS. Must Prisoner Numbers Grow Forever? (an edited version of a lecture given to the Law Society of New South Wales, 22 August)

August 27, 2019

We can all accept imprisonment as the appropriate response for serious and violent crimes. Nevertheless there is a plethora of studies confirming the common sense conclusion that prison is damaging for individuals at a psychological level, especially in the absence of rehabilitative services; that rates of recidivism, however measured, remain persistently over 50 per cent and up to 75 per cent for Indigenous prisoners; that somewhere around half of prisoners have a mental illness or cognitive impairment; that a high proportion the prison population is received from a very small number of socially disadvantaged postcodes; that the over-imprisonment of Indigenous...