Key Points
Everyone in Tasmania deserves to live in safe communities without crime and antisocial behaviour. Tasmanian Labor recognises that after ten years of Liberal neglect, our justice system is broken and in desperate need of repair.
Reoffending rates are worse than ever, most youth offenders end up in the adult justice system later in life and victims' voices are not being properly heard.
Labor's Plan will:
- Implement the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry
- Establish a stand-alone Youth Court to deal with youth offending and child safety
- Reduce both adult and youth offending rates with true opportunities for rehabilitation
- Give victims a true voice on the parole board
- Tackle hate crimes and race related violence
- Close Ashley Youth Detention Centre as soon as possible
- Improve working conditions for workers across the Justice system
Why we need it
Under a decade of the Liberals’ approach to law and order, things have gone from bad to worse. Tasmania has some of the worst reoffending rates in the country and the majority of young people who serve time at Ashley Youth Detention Centre end up in the adult justice system later in life. That’s a sign of a broken system.
A Labor government will focus on the causes of crime: we will reduce reoffending, increase rehabilitation and make communities safer places to live and work.
“A Rebecca White Labor Government will tackle the causes of crime to reduce offending and make our communities safer places to live and work”
The details
A Labor Government will:
1. Plan for a standalone Youth Court
A Labor Government is committed to a standalone Children and Young People Court to allow the court system to deal with matters involving children and young people more quickly and more appropriately.
This new standalone Court will deal with criminal offending as well as child safety matters. The court, with locations in the south, north and northwest, will have dedicated magistrates who specialise in reducing youth offending.
It will be supported by multidisciplinary teams who address the causes of crime, making sure young people are held accountable for their offending while also getting them off the cycle of crime.
It will operate in a way similar to Victoria’s Neighbourhood Justice Centre.
2. Reduce reoffending and reduce crime
Reoffending rates in Tasmania are worse than ever before and amongst the highest in the nation. Labor will reduce offending by:
- Funding programs such as JCP Youth’s groundbreaking BEAST program, which offers sustainable mentorship and support to young people at risk of entering the youth justice system
- Get TAFE safely back into Risdon to make sure people can reconnect with society, reducing reoffending
- Expanding educational programs in the prison so people can leave with a meaningful qualification that can lead to work
- Establishing meaningful pathway planning pre-release
- Increasing the capacity of programs like Beyond the Wire and other housing support services post release
3. Support mandatory diversion programs
Labor will also support court-mandated diversion programs, which have been shown to be more effective and cheaper deterrents to prison. A Labor Government would look to:
- Lift the cap on court-mandated drug diversion places
- Widen eligibility to include offenders with alcohol addiction
- Roll out the court-mandated diversion ‘ways of working’ to community corrections, to ensure more support for offenders who have not been sentenced to imprisonment.
4. Hear victim voices on the Parole Board
While the Parole Board has a representative with experience in victims of crime, individual victims of crime don’t have the chance to address the Parole Board when their offender is up for parole.
Labor will change the rules so that individuals can optionally if they choose, address the Parole Board in person – with the right supports and protections around them to do so.
Victims of serious crime including Tameka Ridgeway have lobbied for this straight forward but meaningful change.
5. Deal with hate crime
A Labor Government will create a series of new offences in the Police Offences Act and Criminal Code that mean people can be charged with hate crimes. This means that when someone commits a crime motivated by racism, homophobia, disability discrimination or other forms of hatred, they will be charged with an offence that takes that into account.
Right now, race related offending can only be considered right at the end of the criminal justice process when someone is being sentenced.
Labor will change the law so that the fact a crime was hate motivated is dealt with right from when a person is charged.
We will also amend the Sentencing Act, which only deals with race, to allow courts to consider other forms of hate crime as well.
6. Implement the Commission of Inquiry’s recommendations
A Rebecca White Labor Government reaffirms its commitment to the implementation of the Commission of Inquiry’s recommendations. We will get done what the Government haven’t.
7. Close Ashley Youth Detention Centre
The Liberals have failed in their commitment to close Ashley as soon as possible and keep pushing the timeframes out by years.
There are already people in the community services sector ready to work with Government on alternatives to Ashley, Labor will prioritise this work and get Ashley closed without delay.
8. Improve working conditions for workers
Too many workers across the justice system are being employed through labour hire companies with unsatisfactory working conditions.
Labor will change this and directly employ prison cleaners, court security staff and other justice employees across the system.
9. Righting the wrongs of the past
It is a shameful part of our history as a state that people were charged with criminal offences for homosexuality – which was not removed from the Criminal Code until 1997.
People who were convicted of these historic offences can now apply to have those offences ‘expunged’ and removed from their record. Labor supports the need for a system of financial redress for people affected and will work with community in government to deliver this.
Tasmanian Labor will also work with community to establish a redress scheme for mothers who had their children forcibly removed via shameful policies of the past, where mothers had their babies forcibly removed for adoption just because they were young and unwed mothers. This policy operated from around the 1920s until as late as the 1980s and inflicted lifelong trauma on the families subjected to this treatment.