Prisons as Progressive Punishment? The State of Corrective Services

• Main Author: FINDLAY, Mark
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2004
• Subjects: Australian Studies; Criminal Law
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/2033; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sol_research/article/3985/viewcontent/PrisonsProgressivePunishment_2004_Findlay.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In the early days of his third term as Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr challenged his government to move away from current law and order politics and to come up with a more progressive approach to punishment. Central to this would be a reconsideration of the place of the prison in criminal justice. Prisons, by their nature and the communities they house, suffer more acutely from the factors of social exclusion that characterise the underprivileged sectors of Australian society. Without the exacerbation of a custodial experience, these characteristics alone militate against the successful reintegration of prisoners back into the community. Any revision of punishment policy, therefore, requires more than retarding spiralling imprisonment rates. For those who do end up in gaol, and for those employed to manage them, the prison environment requires significant redevelopment if inmates are not to leave prison more maladjusted than when they went in.