2024-03-20
Premier Chris Minns was missing-in-action today as the Alternatives to Incarceration Report was launched in the NSW Parliament. This groundbreaking report was released on the same day that the Labor Government’s controversial new bail laws, that would send more kids to prison, were introduced in the NSW Upper House.
Greens MP and spokesperson for justice Sue Higginson said “The prison system in NSW is harmful, costly and is failing both the inmates and wider communities. The system is not rehabilitative in fact it functionally destroys the lives of people that come into contact with it, often through drivers that are outside of their control,”
“The drivers of crime, disadvantage, poverty and complex trauma, are the issues that must be addressed to prevent people from coming into contact with the criminal justice system. What we categorically do not need, is more law and order solutions that funnel the most vulnerable people into and endless cycle of re-incarceration,”
“If Premier Minns could see past the populist and conservative moral panic, he would see ranks and ranks of experts, frontline organisations, and people with lived experience that are providing and offering concrete solutions that work to the crisis of incarceration. But the Premier hasn’t even bothered to turn up.”
“There is a tragic irony that the most politically expedient solution to crime that NSW Labor could find is in direct conflict with the known remedy, and it is political failure that Chris Minns is ducking out of his responsibilities instead of stepping up to what is needed,”
“We have the tools to address over incarceration and entrenched cycles of poverty and violence. We just need the political will for those in charge to make them a reality. It’s time for NSW Labor to step up and take seriously and invest in the recommendations of this report,” Ms Higginson said.