One might draw conclusions from high incarceration rates and relate this to mismanaged economies. The highest incarceration rates tend to be in those places where there is greatest disparity both in incomes and/or access to opportunity. Privatising detention centres has proven to be untenable. Experience reveals essential services and utilities are open to rorting when the private sector is involved particularly where there is little oversight.

It was the same in Iraq and Afghanistan where private contractors were found to be fleecing governments (taxpayers) with false purchases and over-calculating personnel and facilities costs. There are some services that should not be subject to a profit motive over a greater good or the collective interests. Where the line falls is the subject of disagreement. I don't find many people that believe all facets of life (products and services) should be provided by the private sector or the public sector to the exclusion of the other.

The US is on the surface about 'freedoms' but often it is distorted to facilitate easy exploitation of others (eg. low minimum wage) in the pursuit of wealth. The pursuit of wealth is very much wrapped up in the US psyche around freedoms at the cost of other factors.

Resistance against public health care is a good example. Safety nets allow freedoms and stability where sometimes a deregulated free market does not and where ownership of property rates higher on the moral compass than personal liberty (other than freedom to bear arms) and where one's labour is little valued.

Prisons serve a purpose in protecting the 'innocent' from the guilty but I do think there is room for big reforms including a different way of approaching drug rehabilitation (over incarceration for low end users) as well as better rehabilitation services overall especially for the young.

Shortage of space means separation of the most hardened of criminals from younger and/or less dangerous prisoners is not well oversighted. Prison is a good place to learn and foster criminal behaviour. I cannot see how privatising prisons would encourage a rehabilitation agenda over a purely protection agenda.

Steele, we all know that the war on drugs is an abject failure, that placing or keeping people behind bars for wanting to medicate themselves is absurd, while we as a society sell actual dangerous drugs to anyone over 18 who wants them.

The lot should be legalised and regulated, then they will cause the same boost in taxation that alcohol and tobacco do (without the deaths).

We could cut the billions spent on prisons, on police and on "law and order", 90-odd percent of all crime is done by people looking for money to get stoned, get rid of the overpriced, street drugs and actually treat it as a health problem, then its game over.

Even if drugs were sold openly, by government licensed vendors, to over 18's only, with a daily limit (and need for id for purchases), the number of users will not jump dramatically (Portugal decriminalized all drugs years ago so the data exists). The money will be gone, thus so will the criminals, the corruption and the vice that surrounds the same.

Then we'll have a huge number of people who can be highly (speedfreaks especially so) productive members of society.

I like what you say, csteele, though I also think Hasbeen has a point.

Some of our inmates are imprisoned for crimes that are arguably "crimes of desperation". When I arrived in this country back in '88, the Australians I met were busy glamorising the "First Fleeters", many of whom were apparently innocent victims of poverty, transported for stealing loaves of bread to feed their starving families. It was my understanding, as a new arrival, that I should feel sorry for these people.

Now, in 2011, I've given up hanging my shirts out to dry on my washing line because, if they're out there for a full day (or night), they are routinely stolen. I live within walking distance of a rather impoverished neighbourhood, and I'm guessing that many of the people who are now wearing my shirts do so because they are desperate. I'm not encouraged to feel sorry for them. However, addressing the cause of that desperation would, by extension, address the crime and, perhaps, reduce the frequency with which it occurs. Eliminating the causes of desperation (a pipedream, no doubt) would reduce the rates of some crimes and reduce the numbers of people in prisons.

Where I say Hasbeen has a point is that our legal system releases these people back onto the streets (having learnt a skill or two in the big house) without addressing the causes of their crimes. They return to civilisation with the same problems they had when they were put away, fewer job prospects (and fair enough: I don't particularly like the idea of employing a thief, arsonist, murderer, rapist, etc.) and the same avenue for escape - crime.

I think there are some people who are impossible to rehabilitate. There are some people who are just plain malicious, whose crimes deserve little sympathy and lots of punishment. For those people, prison is a suitable place. Our crime rate will never dwindle to zero, but it might be reduced if we make a more concerted effort to address the causes of crime while maintaining (or strengthening) our hardline on its effects.

csteele,

I didn't mean to suggest above that Australia's incarceration rate was comparable to that of the US, only that, as has often been said, in general Australia is like the 51st state of the US.
You've obviously done your research and it's great to see a patriot taking such a critical position.
I agree with Otokonoko that some people just belong in prison, or at least not in society, but for mine these are a tiny minority and the rest are symptomatic of a criminal and sick society.
I've long been critical of the way we treat "individuals" rather than the environment that produced them, however, whether for mental illness, drug addiction, or criminal behaviour; as if the problem inevitably resides with them rather than the society that propagates the behaviour.
I don't believe our species, by and large, is recidivist or mentally compromised or dissolute by nature; these "disorders" are cultivated and exploited in turn. And so long as "offending" individuals are "dealt with" by the sanctimonious State as "recalcitrants", or "pathological" (and credulously own themselves as such), the state will add insult to injury by taking kudos in locking them up, or medicating them! In effect distancing itself from associations "it" nurtured.

csteele, Otokonoko, Squeers, Pelican.

I cannot add much to the points you have all made, apart from agreeing with Custard about decriminalising drugs - however would draw the line at such drugs being as readily available as tobacco and alcohol - we have enough problems with those drugs already.

Treating addicts as criminals achieves nothing, apart from making money for private prisons. They require help, rehabilitation. Decriminalisation would wipe out the top heavy criminal element.

There is no single easy answer, however that we refrain from taking action which we know works far better than what we have at present (from the efforts taken by other countries and in NSW) is either a lack of common sense or an indication that there are people higher up who continue to benefit from the status quo.

A recent example, is the request by the Richmond City council in Victoria, requesting a safe injecting room for addicts in an effort to get these people off the streets leaving syringes and other detritus lying around. The State Government would not even enter into discussion, despite the evidence of success by the Kings Cross drug treatment centre.

WOULD NOT EVEN DISCUSS. This same government recently introduced on the spot fines for swearing. Why do conservatives howl "nanny state" when out of power? Yet apply far more draconian restrictions when in power?

http://tinyurl.com/3l8gy8l

"Zero tolerance" neo-con speak for "nanny state".

How to break the "black market" is the question, while there is an unmet demand, we will continue to have a "black market" for drugs. Police, Judges and most Politicians, would, if they had the guts to tell the truth, tell you they know 'dammed' well that the "War" cannot be won. They also know 'dammed' well that over 1/3 (rapidly approaching 1/2) of all people have used drugs or their family does. How can a government retain legitimacy while it fights a war on behalf of a law that almost 1/2 of all Australian's disagree with? How can a law be valid, given our Constitution, if over 25% of people disagree with it? Why aren't they given the opportunity to have their say at the ballot box? How can the current laws be legitimized without testing the question at the ballot box?