Reflection: Designing and implementing justice reinvestment in Australia

In this reflective piece to accompany our recent submission, ANDY HAMILTON SJ articulates the needs for place-based, community led justice reinvestment that is truly effective in the Australian context.

The interest in justice reinvestment grew when the United States was facing high and rising costs of building and staffing prisons. They began to ask whether addressing the social causes that underlay the jailing of people, would be cheaper and more effective. They argued that the money spent on programs to keep people out of prison would be more than equal than that necessary to build more prisons.

The experience of Jesuit Social Services and of others working within the Australian justice system, has enabled us to define more closely the place of justice reinvestment.

In the Australian context, we have learnt it involves reducing crime by strengthening local communities and, in the case of First Nations peoples, guided by the connections of people to culture, community and Country. This approach is distinctively place-based. That is to say it recognises that people are intimately connected to place, and that each place has its own character, services and infrastructure.

Because of the diversity of communities and places, each local community holds the knowledge about its own needs and about how best to respond to them. Successful justice reinvestment initiatives must consequently collaborate and learn from their local communities. To do this, it must first build trusting, reciprocating relationships. Its commitment therefore must be for the long term and its ongoing continuing funding must be guaranteed.

This broad vision of place-based initiatives shapes the detail of what effective justice reinvestment should look like. It relies on strong local leadership and on fostering the expertise and knowledge of community to inform decision-making. The justice reinvestment project and unit should focus on recognising and drawing on the strengths of each community rather than adopting a deficit, punitive approach.

Initiatives should also be guided, and effectiveness reviewed, by local data from community organisations and government departments. The collection of data should extend beyond the working of the justice system to address all the factors that lead to people being incarcerated. It should be drawn on to promote healing in the working of the justice system and reform at all points where people come into contact with it. The decision making must come out of conversations within and with communities, guided by their leadership and data.

Justice reinvestment is also based on building long term relationships of trust between all community stakeholders including individuals, organisations and governments. Thus, sufficient, long-term funding to design, implement and evaluate initiatives is pivotal to its success. Funding must be long term to ensure its longevity and requires input from state and territory governments, Commonwealth funding, as well as philanthropic donors. This is crucial to building capacity and to attracting a skilled workforce to drive the work.

Community led and place-based initiatives, informed by those with the expertise and lived experiences will help to tailor responses that address local factors driving offending. Access to data will help to make informed decisions and to continue building an evidence base for communities. For First Nations communities, this data collection and ownership must align with the principles of data sovereignty to ensure they hold the narrative relating to their story.

These reflections are drawn from one of many submissions made by Jesuit Social Services to Government enquiries on current issues. The submissions always focus on the needs of the people, especially young people, whom our Jesuit Social Services staff accompany work and whose experience and needs we understand.