Saturday 27 March 1999
By Caroline Milburn
LAW REPORTER
As crime increases and community leaders agonise over what
to do, a national conference this week offered hope.
The meeting of Australia's top crime fighters demolished a
few myths along the way.
First, the rise in violent crime, especially among juveniles,
is not a media beat-up. Studies revealed escalating rates of
assault, especially among boys aged 16 to 18 - a trend that is
part of an international phenomenon.
Populist calls for longer and tougher jail sentences as a
way of deterring criminals were also debunked by cold facts.
Experts at the Australian Institute of Criminology's conference
said the trend towards more punitive sentencing had been entrenched
in Australia over the past decade, and yet crime was increasing.
Crime control methods traditionally relied on by governments
to solve the most common crimes of burglary and assault have
flopped. The clear-up rate for burglary is abysmal.
In New South Wales only 6per cent of break and enters and
car thefts are solved.
At a national level, about 25 per cent of all reported crimes
are solved.
There is more crime in the community than police statistics
reveal. Most victims do not report crimes to the police or other
government agencies, according to crime and safety surveys.
So what can be done? Professor Ross Homel, of Griffith University,
a criminologist who is a co-author of the Federal Government's
national report on crime prevention, says some startling results
have emerged from a program that experts around the world have
been watching closely.
Several hundred disadvantaged young pregnant women in New
York state, many unmarried, were divided into two groups. One
group received 10 pre-birth home visits from nurses trained in
parenting skills and monthly visits from the nurses until their
child turned two. The other group did not receive the special
help. Now, 15 years later, 9per cent of the teenagers in the
intervention group had criminal convictions or probation violations,
compared with 47per cent of the group that did not receive help.
The extraordinary results confirmed what smaller studies have
already shown - that the right kind of parenting support to disadvantaged
families in a child's first few years of life can halve the rate
at which children in later life become persistent offenders.
The benefits for communities and governments are immense.
It costs $3200 a year per family for a government to provide
an early-intervention home-visit program, compared with about
$55,000 a year to house a criminal in jail.
One political difficulty is that such parenting programs take
about 10 years to deliver their social dividends. But there are
credible, short-term crime-control measures available to govern-ments
brave enough to imple-ment them, according to criminologists.
The director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research,
Dr Don Weatherburn, says a lot of transient offending occurs
because the opportunities for crime are so easily available.
He says triggers for crime are created when young people are
provided with inadequate recreational facilities, when public
amenities are poorly designed and maintained and when people
are given unrestricted access to lethal weapons.
He says there is plenty of evidence that ``intelligent policing''
- the monitoring of crime hotspots to gather information about
the causes of crime - works well when it is done in close partnership
with community groups and government agencies.
``Juvenile crime, for example is often stimulated by truancy
and drug use,'' Dr Weatherburn says. ``Control of truancy and
drug use requires concerted action from the police, education
and health departments.''
In Victoria, police are pursuing innovative crime-control
strategies aimed at dealing with the underlying causes of crime.
In Idistrict, a region that covers Melbourne's north-western
suburbs, including the crime-prone suburb of Broadmeadows, police
are testing a drug-diversion program run with the state Department
of Human Services.
Under the early-intervention scheme, a person charged for
the first time with heroin use has the option of avoiding a conviction
by agreeing to treatment at a drug clinic. So far, preliminary
results have been encouraging. None of those referred for treatment
programs have been sent back to the police for failing to attend.
The region's district commander, Chief Inspector Peter Driver,
says the early-intervention scheme, along with police involvement
in community youth programs, camps for disadvantaged youth and
drug lectures in schools, have become important weapons in the
battle against illicit drug use.
Dr Weatherburn, who delivered a paper at the Canberra conference
on ways to combat crime among transient and persistent offenders,
says vested-interest groups have been the toughest nut to crack
when it comes to persuading governments to implement proven crime-control
strategies.
Studies have shown that drunkenness is a major contributing
factor in assaults and malicious damage to property. But the
liquor industry has resisted the need to implement tougher controls
on licensed premises that serve alcohol to intoxicated patrons.
Car makers showed scant interest in improving vehicle security
until insurance companies began rating vehicles according to
how easy they were to steal.
Second-hand dealers and pawnbrokers resisted the NSW Government's
efforts to introduce stricter controls on the sale of second-hand
goods, despite research showing that such controls were vital
in preventing theft.
Dr Weatherburn says the first step in promoting a more informed
public debate about crime should be acknowledging reality and
accepting what the statistics are telling us.
``It may be perfectly true that the fear some people have
of crime is groundless and exaggerated,'' he said. ``It may be
perfectly true that some media commentators ruthlessly exploit
public fear of crime. There is good reason, all the same, to
be concerned about the level of crime in Australia.''
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