Justice system addicted to jail - ANU academic

A leading law academic from ANU has warned that Australia's criminal justice system is addicted to incarceration, describing the rate of imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as a catastrophe. Senior Lecturer at the ANU College of Law Dr Anthony Hopkins has used National Law Week to highlight the issue, and said Australia needs to look seriously at alternatives to imprisonment that protect the community and provide real opportunities for rehabilitation. But he said judges and magistrates often have no alternative to jail sentences because rehabilitation programs are not available. The push for incarceration is also driven by fear. "In relation to imprisonment, we have a default reaction that is often born out of a misplaced fear that we are faced with a crime wave and that the answer is to get tougher on crime," Dr Hopkins said. Latest figures show more than 40,000 people were in custody in Australia in mid-2016, compared to 25,000 a decade earlier. Dr Hopkins said around 56 per cent of prisoners had been in prison previously.