Latest news with #toughoncrime

ABC News
30-07-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Closing the Gap data shows youth detention targets backsliding in key states and territories
The Productivity Commission says "tough-on-crime" policies are directly undermining Closing the Gap targets, as the latest annual data shows rates of adult incarceration continue to worsen and youth detention rates soar in parts of the country. The data also shows the Northern Territory is the worst-performing jurisdiction in the country, with the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people going backwards on eight targets, including youth detention and adult incarceration. Nationally, only four out of the 19 targets are on track to be met by the deadline of 2031. Since winning government in 2024, the Northern Territory has lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10 and introduced tougher bail laws and police search powers. Productivity Commissioner and Gungarri man Selwyn Button said its "tough-on-crime" approach has shown up in the annual Closing the Gap data. "There is an absolute direct correlation between the two," he told the ABC's Indigenous Affairs Team. "We certainly can see the direct correlation between the legislative change in the Northern Territory to the direct outcomes in terms of increasing numbers of incarceration rates." Advocates and researchers are calling on governments to avoid punitive approaches and invest in holistic solutions that address root causes like poverty, health and housing. "You can't actually arrest your way out of an issue," said Mr Button. "What we're asking governments to think about is what early intervention programs you can design … so that our young people aren't ending up in the criminal justice system to just determine a criminalised response to dealing with a social issue." Deep in the red centre of Australia, one community organisation is helping children as young as 10 years old connect with their culture and get help. BushMob is an Aboriginal community-controlled alcohol and drug rehabilitation program based in Mpartnwe/Alice Springs, and has been a safe place for many young people for more than two decades. It provides cultural and therapeutic programs, including on-country bush camps, horse therapy, counselling, and support linking in with services. "The young people talk about connection to culture, feeling their place within it, feeling the connection to something other than the systems that they're seeing day to day," said BushMob CEO, Jock MacGregor. For over 16 years, Mr MacGregor has seen many young children come through the doors, some compelled by court orders and others who admit themselves by choice. "When I talk to young people about what's going on with life … They feel like there's no choice, they feel like there's no support," Mr MacGregor said. "They feel very isolated and if they want to get help, [they don't] know where to go." The Australian Human Rights Commission has long called for greater investment in early intervention and diversion programs such as BushMob's. Its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Katie Kiss said the Northern Territory's current approach "is ignoring all the expert advice that they're receiving". "[Going backwards on] each of those targets that are under the Closing the Gap agreement represents a human rights violation," she said. This week, the Finocchiaro government has introduced another round of sweeping changes to its Youth Justice Act. They include: In a statement, the NT government said the new laws were a response to "repeated community concerns" and cases where young people reoffended while on bail. "Territorians have a right to safe streets and communities, victims have a right to a responsible justice system, and serious offenders have the right to remain silent," Corrections Minister Gerard Maley said. The new laws came in the same week the ABC reported nearly 400 Indigenous children were held in NT police watch houses over a six-month period, during which time there were nearly 20 incidents of self-harm involving children. The ABC has sought comment from the NT government on the latest Closing the Gap data. The Productivity Commission report shows the four targets on track to be met by 2031 include pre-school program enrolments, employment, and land and sea rights. As reported in March, the rate of babies born at a healthy weight was no longer on track to be met. In a statement, Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy said while some progress had been made, more work needed to be done. "I am pleased that nationally we are seeing improvements in 10 of the 15 targets with data," she said. "However, it is very concerning that we are still seeing outcomes worsening for incarceration rates, children in out-of-home care and suicide. "It's important that state and territory governments all back in their commitments under the National Agreement with actions that will help improve outcomes for First Nations people." Along with the NT, Queensland and the ACT are also going backwards on their commitment to reduce the rate of young people in jail by 30 per cent by 2031. While the 2023/24 rate of youth incarceration has increased nationally from the previous four years, the overall trend shows no change from the baseline year of 2018/19. The report also found more than one-third of kids in youth detention last year first entered the system when they were 10–13 years old. The Commission's latest report comes as the number of First Nations people who have died in police or prison custody exceeds 600 deaths since a landmark royal commission handed down recommendations in 1991.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
South Dakota is on track to spend $2 billion on prisons in the next decade
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping. 'Crime has been falling everywhere in the country, with historic drops in crime in the last year or two,' said Bob Libal, senior campaign strategist at the criminal justice nonprofit The Sentencing Project. 'It's a particularly unusual time to be investing $2 billion in prisons.' Some Democratic-led states have worked to close prisons and enact changes to lower inmate populations, but that's a tough sell in Republican-majority states such as South Dakota that believe in a tough-on-crime approach, even if that leads to more inmates. The South Dakota State Penitentiary For now, state lawmakers have set aside a $600 million fund to replace the overcrowded 144-year-old South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, making it one of the most expensive taxpayer-funded projects in South Dakota history. But South Dakota will likely need more prisons. Phoenix-based Arrington Watkins Architects, which the state hired as a consultant, has said South Dakota will need 3,300 additional beds in coming years, bringing the cost to $2 billion. Driving up costs is the need for facilities with different security levels to accommodate the inmate population. Concerns about South Dakota's prisons first arose four years ago, when the state was flush with COVID-19 relief funds. Lawmakers wanted to replace the penitentiary, but they couldn't agree on where to put the prison and how big it should be. A task force of state lawmakers assembled by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden is expected to decide that in a plan for prison facilities this July. Many lawmakers have questioned the proposed cost, but few have called for criminal justice changes that would make such a large prison unnecessary. 'One thing I'm trying to do as the chairman of this task force is keep us very focused on our mission,' said Lieutenant Gov. Tony Venhuizen. 'There are people who want to talk about policies in the prisons or the administration or the criminal justice system more broadly, and that would be a much larger project than the fairly narrow scope that we have.' South Dakota's laws mean more people are in prison South Dakota's incarceration rate of 370 per 100,000 people is an outlier in the Upper Midwest. Neighbors Minnesota and North Dakota have rates of under 250 per 100,000 people, according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy nonprofit. Nearly half of South Dakota's projected inmate population growth can be attributed to a law approved in 2023 that requires some violent offenders to serve the full-length of their sentences before parole, according to a report by Arrington Watkins. When South Dakota inmates are paroled, about 40% are ordered to return to prison, the majority of those due to technical violations such as failing a drug test or missing a meeting with a parole officer. Those returning inmates made up nearly half of prison admissions in 2024. Sioux Falls criminal justice attorney Ryan Kolbeck blamed the high number of parolees returning in part on the lack of services in prison for people with drug addictions. 'People are being sent to the penitentiary but there's no programs there for them. There's no way it's going to help them become better people,' he said. 'Essentially we're going to put them out there and house them for a little bit, leave them on parole and expect them to do well.' South Dakota also has the second-greatest disparity of Native Americans in its prisons. While Native Americans make up one-tenth of South Dakota's population, they make up 35% of those in state prisons, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit public policy group. Though legislators in the state capital, Pierre, have been talking about prison overcrowding for years, they're reluctant to dial back on tough-on-crime laws. For example, it took repeated efforts over six years before South Dakota reduced a controlled substance ingestion law to a misdemeanor from a felony for the first offense, aligning with all other states. 'It was a huge, Herculean task to get ingestion to be a misdemeanor,' Kolbeck said. Former penitentiary warden Darin Young said the state needs to upgrade its prisons, but he also thinks it should spend up to $300 million on addiction and mental illness treatment. 'Until we fix the reasons why people come to prison and address that issue, the numbers are not going to stop,' he said. Without policy changes, the new prisons are sure to fill up, criminal justice experts agreed. 'We might be good for a few years, now that we've got more capacity, but in a couple years it'll be full again,' Kolbeck said. 'Under our policies, you're going to reach capacity again soon.'


Washington Post
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
South Dakota is on track to spend $2 billion on prisons in the next decade
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping.

Associated Press
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
South Dakota is on track to spend $2 billion on prisons in the next decade
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping. 'Crime has been falling everywhere in the country, with historic drops in crime in the last year or two,' said Bob Libal, senior campaign strategist at the criminal justice nonprofit The Sentencing Project. 'It's a particularly unusual time to be investing $2 billion in prisons.' Some Democratic-led states have worked to close prisons and enact changes to lower inmate populations, but that's a tough sell in Republican-majority states such as South Dakota that believe in a tough-on-crime approach, even if that leads to more inmates. The South Dakota State Penitentiary For now, state lawmakers have set aside a $600 million fund to replace the overcrowded 144-year-old South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, making it one of the most expensive taxpayer-funded projects in South Dakota history. But South Dakota will likely need more prisons. Phoenix-based Arrington Watkins Architects, which the state hired as a consultant, has said South Dakota will need 3,300 additional beds in coming years, bringing the cost to $2 billion. Driving up costs is the need for facilities with different security levels to accommodate the inmate population. Concerns about South Dakota's prisons first arose four years ago, when the state was flush with COVID-19 relief funds. Lawmakers wanted to replace the penitentiary, but they couldn't agree on where to put the prison and how big it should be. A task force of state lawmakers assembled by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden is expected to decide that in a plan for prison facilities this July. Many lawmakers have questioned the proposed cost, but few have called for criminal justice changes that would make such a large prison unnecessary. 'One thing I'm trying to do as the chairman of this task force is keep us very focused on our mission,' said Lieutenant Gov. Tony Venhuizen. 'There are people who want to talk about policies in the prisons or the administration or the criminal justice system more broadly, and that would be a much larger project than the fairly narrow scope that we have.' South Dakota's laws mean more people are in prison South Dakota's incarceration rate of 370 per 100,000 people is an outlier in the Upper Midwest. Neighbors Minnesota and North Dakota have rates of under 250 per 100,000 people, according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy nonprofit. Nearly half of South Dakota's projected inmate population growth can be attributed to a law approved in 2023 that requires some violent offenders to serve the full-length of their sentences before parole, according to a report by Arrington Watkins. When South Dakota inmates are paroled, about 40% are ordered to return to prison, the majority of those due to technical violations such as failing a drug test or missing a meeting with a parole officer. Those returning inmates made up nearly half of prison admissions in 2024. Sioux Falls criminal justice attorney Ryan Kolbeck blamed the high number of parolees returning in part on the lack of services in prison for people with drug addictions. 'People are being sent to the penitentiary but there's no programs there for them. There's no way it's going to help them become better people,' he said. 'Essentially we're going to put them out there and house them for a little bit, leave them on parole and expect them to do well.' South Dakota also has the second-greatest disparity of Native Americans in its prisons. While Native Americans make up one-tenth of South Dakota's population, they make up 35% of those in state prisons, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit public policy group. Though legislators in the state capital, Pierre, have been talking about prison overcrowding for years, they're reluctant to dial back on tough-on-crime laws. For example, it took repeated efforts over six years before South Dakota reduced a controlled substance ingestion law to a misdemeanor from a felony for the first offense, aligning with all other states. 'It was a huge, Herculean task to get ingestion to be a misdemeanor,' Kolbeck said. Former penitentiary warden Darin Young said the state needs to upgrade its prisons, but he also thinks it should spend up to $300 million on addiction and mental illness treatment. 'Until we fix the reasons why people come to prison and address that issue, the numbers are not going to stop,' he said. Without policy changes, the new prisons are sure to fill up, criminal justice experts agreed. 'We might be good for a few years, now that we've got more capacity, but in a couple years it'll be full again,' Kolbeck said. 'Under our policies, you're going to reach capacity again soon.'