
“It is my experience that in general people leave prison worse than when they went in,” Gerry Georgatos
Prison is a heartbreaking experience – a damaging one. In general it is my view that people come out of prison worse than what they went in. Wherever possible I would support any policy that ensures other options to jailing people. One quarter of the Western Australian prison population is comprised of poverty related fine defaulters. The prison experience ruins lives.
I was disturbed by the ill-informed comments of a couple of well-meaning grassroots activists who criticised an alternative option to the jailing of fine defaulters. I have spent the last six months positively lobbying the Federal Government to roll-out the Custody Notification Service to Western Australia – preferably nationally. This is progressing. Alongside this lobbying, I have pressed the Federal Government to urge the Western Australian Government to stop jailing poverty related fine defaulters. We must stop turning the poor into criminals.
Last week, I was shocked by media stories where a grassroots activist criticised an alternative to jailing fine defaulters. The option would secure the debt would be repaid, and would ensure that there was no fine defaulting and more importantly as a result of this virtue no fine defaulter would be presented before the criminal justice system.
The Federal and WA Governments are now looking at alternatives because of my relentless six months of campaigning and in-person lobbying of Ministers. We must understand the management systems at hand – our parliaments. If I had my way I would quash all fine default related convictions, I would provide an amnesty to more than 1,300 Western Australian inmates. With the majority of fine defaulters I would wipe their debts and give them the helping hand they may need. But that is not the society we live in. There is no way we would get majority support for this from our decision-makers. So we have to get what we can. Far too many of our decision-makers reckon that if we don’t punish fine defaulters then they will continue doing as they do. I am not about tying punitive measures to such breaches but the majority of society is and does.
In light of what I know of the prison experience and of the psychosocial and societal impacts, my aim is to reduce the prison population, my aim is to keep people out of jail. These must be our leading premises.
I have been able to win politicians to supporting the Custody Notification Service for Western Australia and I have been able to get them to discuss alternative options to jailing fine defaulters. No-one else has been able to do this so far.
Years go by and we blow away change – and ruin people’s lives – because we reach for too much. I remind some of my fellow campaigners that when they naively criticise something that is not ideal but still delivers the major premise they are playing with fire, they are dicing with people’s lives.
The media ran a response story with a grassroots activist on Senator Nigel Scullion’s alternative to jailing fine defaulters in Western Australia. Senator Scullion is urging Western Australia to implement the capped garnishing of wages or welfare payments as an alternative. Of course this option is preferable to jail. Of course it is, so to my well-meaning activist friends, do not play with human life. There is little chance of the Western Australian Government, bent with a mindset of punitive controls, that they will accede to much else.
I remind of my earlier statement that it is my experience that in general people come out of prison worse than when they went in.
We must do everything possible – anything – to keep people out of prison. Prison is a bastion of trauma, damage, a warehouse of illness and breakdown. Psychosocially prison damages people – there is trauma, situational trauma, multiple trauma, clinical breakdowns, depressions, displaced anger, tumults of despair and irreparable harm.
In an online news story an activist criticised the garnishing of wages or welfare payments – capped at 14 per cent – as akin to “taking the food out of children’s mouths”. This type of ill-informed and muddled-minded commentary is dangerous and puts at risk the prospect of protecting people from a prison sentence.
Contrary to the activist’s ill-informed claims that capped deductions will “take food out of the mouths of babies” we must be honest and realise that when a parent is in jail is when they are prevented from putting food on the table. When a parent is in jail, there is no income contribution to the household. Their wages stop, for those on welfare payments the payments stop. Furthermore, the jailed parent is not there for the children period. When a parent does come home from the prison experience what traumas do they bring back with them? So what are we criticising and at whose expense?
Some argue that community work orders are preferable options to deductions. We can support work orders but the State Government will not support this, so then do not criticise away the other option which will deliver the major premise – keeping people out of jail.
The assumption that community work orders are the best option is a good one but not panacea because if there is a breach of the work order then they will finish up before the Court. But the ‘compulsory’ deduction will ensure that no-one comes before a Court.
I learned of the death of Ms Dhu on the day of her passing. Her death was a needless tragedy. As a deaths in custody researcher her ‘case’ was one of the worst ever I have come across. I have studied more than 100 deaths in custody. As a researcher in racism, and someone who lifelong has lived the impacts of racism, the mistreatment of Ms Dhu resonated and emphasized systemic risk factors. Few will ever know how much work I have put in behind the scenes, how many organisations and how many individuals I have met with to exact change, to make sure we reduce the risk factors and increase the protective factors so that another death in custody like that of Ms Dhu’s never occurs again.
Soon after Ms Dhu’s passing, I travelled to Canberra and met with the Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion and urged him to roll-out the Custody Notification Service in Western Australia, which I believe would have saved Ms Dhu’s life. I lobbied Senator Scullion for him to lead the way with the WA mob to end the jailing of poverty related fine defaulters. I have spent months on all this and lobbied other parliamentarians too.
Unlike the majority of our social commentators, I visit prisons, I have mustered with prisoners, I know what the inside of a prison looks like, feels like, I work with people post prison release. I am also a suicide prevention researcher and I understand the effects of the prison experience on people. I understand that we must do everything we can to keep people out of prison.
We must understand our society, we must not be naïve and we cannot put at risk good outcomes for wishful thinking. We must reduce unnecessary punitive measures where we can.
It is naive and preposterously dangerous for anyone to dismiss the solution of garnished income. It is the only viable solution that can be pulled off with the pivotal majority support of our parliamentary decision-makers. To suggest that garnishing wages to pay debt is ‘income management’ or ‘quarantining’ is scaremongering nonsense. It is about repaying a debt in order to keep people out of jail when no other options are within reach of being achieved at this time. Ms Dhu’s mother, Della Roe, said to me she supports this measure. Ms Roe said had this been in place last August her daughter would be alive today.
I can only restate that to suggest that the 14 per cent capped deduction will starve a family is ludicrous. When someone goes to jail, their income stops altogether, and their parental responsibilities are lost altogether. To suggest that community work orders alone are a better option, well that is at the magistrate’s discretion, but the individual could be consigned for quite a long time to a community work order – taking them away from family and other prospects.
We must achieve what we can when we can.
In general, for many Australians debt is a treacherously stress riddled issue. Debt destroys lives, destroys relationships, destroys families, leads to insolvency/bankruptcy. Debt has to do with the DNA of our societies, so if you want the idealistic changes that my activist mates call for we’d have to change the DNA of our societies. The owing of money is viciously pursued; in real terms the tragedy is that money has more value than human life – there are more laws in place to chase down debt than there are laws in place to protect people from being smashed psychosocially.
The other day, Premier Colin Barnett, someone who I have relentlessly criticised on so many fronts, said that he supports Senator Scullion’s alternative option to jailing people. We must not miss this opportunity. To my critics, I say to them, it is not you shuffled off to jail and I say to you, it would be ‘criminal’ to keep sending people to jail for something like fine defaults that some of us have worked tirelessly to change.
Please, remember the major premise – the keeping people out of jail.
– The author of this article, Gerry Georgatos, declares an impartiality conflict of interest. He is a long-time custodial systems and deaths in custody researcher.
More reading:
Custody Notification Service will continue in NSW – but please hurry it up for WA | The Stringer
Western Australia urged to stop jailing fine defaulters | The Stringer
Family of Ms Dhu still waiting for answers | The Stringer
Custody Notification Service in WA will save lives says ALSWA CEO, Dennis Eggington | The Stringer
Family calls for justice for Ms Dhu – rallies across Australia Scullion may lead way with rolling out the Custody Notification Service nationally
In the name of Julieka Dhu, the Custody Notification Service should be rolled out nationally
Unpaid fines destroy lives with jail time 22-year-old police death in custody should not have occurred Death in police custody – Custody Notification Service should be implemented nationwide
Custody Notification Service in WA will save lives says ALSWA CEO, Dennis Eggington | The Stringer
maintain the pressure Gerry,
Always Craig – always, there’s no other way.
In NSW we have a scheme called Work Development Orders run through the Attorney General’s Dept. I work in community health and we are registered with the scheme so that when women come to us they accrue credits for things like counselling, mental health care planning, group participation. These credits are then deducte off the person’s debt to the govt for fines and other state debt. This is an alternative to have the bailiff come and talk your telly and furniture or having your licence cancelled. We are located about 100kms from Sydney so not sure how this would work in more rural or remote areas because you need to have services that will work with people. But the scheme is a good incentive together people to address their issues especially if they are D&A or mental health related. We notice that many women do not return so she/he needs to be ready for this process so it won’t work for everyone but where the person is ready it can be very helpful on a number of levels. Therefore you need other alternatives to like you discuss in your article.
How about citing the corporacracy that has developed this endless financially punitive system? We are all trapped in a Godless feudal system, slavery!
Time to recognise the whole Australian system of government is a great con, the seal of strya is merely a corporate brand, has no backing in law, unless we agree to it…
Fines are just revenue raising for the corporation which ultimately owns australia, regardless of the social cost, in their eyes, if you are not contributing to society, slaving with your sweat equity, then you are worthless. They trade on your birth certificate, our value to them is productivity only.
Gerry, have you thought about joining the Liberal Party?
Mr Newhouse you should end your undermining of Gerry. I support much of what you do with DICWC but Gerry is an expert in many areas, including deaths in custody. Work with him, not against him. I have relocated from WA to SA and yesterday enjoyed the privilege of listening to Gerry at a conference speak so informatively and eloquently on so many issues. More people should listen to Gerry.
Mr Newhouse I agree with Gerry’s article that we should do everything we can to keep people out of prison.
I quote Gerry, “Unlike the majority of our social commentators, I visit prisons, I have mustered with prisoners, I know what the inside of a prison looks like, feels like, I work with people post prison release. I am also a suicide prevention researcher and I understand the effects of the prison experience on people. I understand that we must do everything we can to keep people out of prison.
We must understand our society, we must not be naïve and we cannot put at risk good outcomes for wishful thinking. We must reduce unnecessary punitive measures where we can.”
There should be more people like Gerry, and if only politicians were like this man, who not only know what they are talking about but who back up what they say with so many good works.
Aboriginal imprisonment and Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
WGAR News: Land Grab In The Outback: Australia Unites Against Genocide of First Peoples with Gerry Georgatos and Elders: Global Freedom Movement Media
https://indymedia.org.au/2015/04/16/wgar-news-land-grab-in-the-outback-australia-unites-against-genocide-of-first-peoples
Contents:
* Extended Insightful Audio/Video Interview: Aimee Devlin & Brendan D. Murphy, Global Freedom Movement Media:
Land Grab In The Outback: Australia Unites Against Genocide of First Peoples with Gerry Georgatos and Elders [Featuring Bella & Herbert Bropho] …
* News Analysis: NACCHO Health & Justice News: Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 24th anniversary but still in crisis
* News Analysis: NACCHO Prison Health News: Prisons are a poor substitute for primary and mental health care
* News Analysis: Melissa Sweet, Croakey – the Crikey health blog: Change the narrative to stop Aboriginal incarceration
* News Analysis: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: We are about to stop jailing fine defaulters – to the critics, do not naively criticise this away …
* WGAR Background: Justice Reinvestment, Aboriginal imprisonment and Aboriginal deaths in custody …