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Monday, 21 November 2011
Page: 12887

Mr CHRISTENSEN (Dawson) (11:27): This motion before us seemingly portrays incarceration as a bad thing and the people who are incarcerated are somehow victims rather than criminals. But people who are incarcerated are criminals. This motion ignores the root cause of incarceration: criminals and crime. Ignoring this and trying to find a treatment for the symptom, such as considering alternatives to incarceration such as weekend detention, will not only do nothing to fix the problem but will actually make it worse.

I weighed up the things that this motion asks us to do in terms of how effective they would be in fixing the problem. Some of the suggestions in there should simply be rejected out of hand. Why do I say that? Because a lot of them are already happening. To suggest that smart policing should be brought in is an insult to those engaged in policing. To suggest that we should provide education in prison is also an insult to those in corrective services and their contractors who are already providing those services. The closest thing in this motion to a suggestion to treat the cause of crime is the suggestion to invest in early intervention programs to deter young people from crime. At least that addresses the problem: the creation of criminals.

Despite the sentiment of the motion, we already have a deterrent and I have to say that it is one that we do not use enough. It is called 'going to jail'. It is the namby-pamby culture that we have allowed to develop that has neutered this deterrent. The problem is not that there are too many people in jail; the problem is that not enough people who commit heinous crimes against law-abiding citizens and their communities are going to jail. Any member in this place who is in touch with their electorate will know that people are sick and tired of seeing thugs do the crime without having to do the time. I did a tiny bit of research and found several dozen instances just in north Queensland in my electorate where criminals committed crimes for which most people would think they should be locked up for some period but they went walking free on probation. I have here an article about a 20-year-old who committed nine crimes, including burglary, trespass and drug possession. He scared an old lady when she found him in her kitchen and he tried to grab her handbag from her. He went on 15 months probation.

Another young fellow, 17 years old and a repeat offender, had a mate who stole a government vehicle and had a tussle with a government youth services employee—someone who is supposed to be helping him. He ended up taking keys from him, grabbed the car and took our repeat offender on a joyride to Collinsville, who has ended up on probation for 12 months. There was a woman who punched a policeman in the face; she received a $600 fine and 15 months probation.

I could go on and on with this sort of stuff. The community expects people who commit such crimes to be incarcerated but the reality is that they are not. Governments, magistrates and the courts need to realise that if someone commits a serious crime the community does want to see them jailed. A part of that is for rehabilitation; another part of that is for punishment.

We forget that these people should be punished. They are criminals; they have committed a crime. The criminals that we are breeding know that they actually will not go to jail and that they will not get punished. They keep committing crimes, starting with petty crimes and graduating to more serious ones. They know that they can be caught time and time again and that they will keep on getting warnings and probations. You just have to look through newspaper reports to see that in the court reporting.

They keep pushing the boundaries because they cannot even get the proverbial slap on the wrist. The namby-pamby state outlawed that. Sometimes they push too far and they do find themselves in jail because they commit something that even a magistrate cannot look the other way on. By that time they have carved out their little criminal life and they think they are being harshly treated by having their freedom taken away from them for a few months.

By reserving jail time only for the most serious of crimes we are encouraging crimes of an increasingly disgusting and disrespectful nature. This motion does call for innovative ways to reduce crime and incarceration, but here is one: what about punishment—proper punishment that means something and which acts as a deterrent? Proper punishment is not weekend detention or periodic detention; that is stuff that you give to a 13-year-old—you ground them. Taking away someone's PlayStation and sending them to the watch-house for the weekend is not going to be a serious deterrent in anyone's eyes. A serious deterrent is adequate jail sentencing of criminals who do crimes which the community thinks they should be jailed for. (Time expired)