Kylie Moon
I was shocked to hear that the NSW and Victorian prison administrations had decided to block the distribution of election information to prisoners. This decision follows an August federal act that took the vote away from prisoners serving sentences of three years or more, when previously it was five years.
Social justice organisations have put together a four-page, tabloid newspaper that contained statements from five political parties about their law and order policies, questions from serving prisoners and politicians' replies, a history of the prisoner vote, information on postal voting and mobile prison booths and an Australian Law Reform Commission advertisement for an inquiry into federal sentencing. Eighteen thousand copies were printed, enough for one out of every two prisoners in Australia.
However, prisoners' rights group Justice Action was informed on October 1 that the material would not be circulated in Australia's two biggest states. There was no explanation given. The broadsheet will be distributed in all other states.
While government funding for health care, education, public housing and real job creation is slashed, more jails are being built, longer jail terms are being imposed, and police are being given even greater powers.
Yet the majority of prisoners are inside for "victimless crimes", for being poor or Aboriginal, or are on remand. If the government was really serious about reducing crime, it would jail the corporate crooks who destroy thousands of people's lives to make more profits and the politicians who rort the system for personal gain, not the poor.
According to Justice Action, 85% of female prisoners in NSW are survivors of sexual abuse, and 70-90% have a drug addiction problem. The vast majority of women prisoners are locked up for non-violent offences. Yet both major parties compete in an auction to increase penalties for victimless crimes, while petty theft is used to pay for the exorbitant prices that Australia's illegal drug capitalists make a killing from.
The law is also racist. As a Sydney resident, I have seen first-hand how police routinely harass, intimidate and often abuse Aboriginal residents of Redfern and cops are more likely to stop and search young people of "Middle Eastern" or Asian appearance - this is the reality of racial profiling and it is disgusting.
The class bias of Australia's court system was never clearer than in the decision to jail former manufacturing union state secretary Craig Johnston, for charges resulting from an industrial dispute - while the James Hardie bosses walk free. The Socialist Alliance has been using our election campaign to publicise the campaign to free Johnston.
There is no question in my mind that the jail system works for the rich, and against the poor. That is why I am a member of the Socialist Alliance, which, among other things stands for:
- More government funding for community services and real job creation, not more jails and police.
- The immediate implementation of all recommendations of the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody.
- Free, quality legal aid for all who need it.
- Award wages for working prisoners.
- Non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment.
- The right to vote for all prisoners.
- No police sniffer dogs in public places.
- Decriminalising victimless crimes, including personal drug use and prostitution.
- No private prisons.
[To get a copy of the broadsheet, visit From Green Left Weekly, October 6, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.