Laura Norder: Perth’s pinup girl
No, I’m not dead. I’ve just been preoccupied, that’s all.
We’ve just had a state election, one that added a new dimension to the word “uninspiring”. As is typically the case in this state, there was no small degree of chest-beating about “getting tough” on the criminally inclined.
If you were to read Perth’s daily newspaper (there’s only one), or watch a news bulletin on commercial television, you could forgiven for assuming that Perth’s streets are in a state perpetual anarchy and you are liable to be slaughtered should you be sufficiently foolhardy to leave your house after sunset. Lurid pictures and emotive headlines are par for the course, and naturally all reporting on crime trends has a negative slant, regardless of what the statistics are actually telling us.
So what are the statistics telling us? Well, first of all, and contrary to widespread belief, the state’s crime rate is not “soaring”, “skyrocketing” or “ever increasing”, to quote some of the adjectives I have heard used. The incidence of crime against the person has been relatively static in recent years. The incidence of crime against property has decreased markedly. However, there are some specific areas within these categories that have exhibited an increase – and unfortunately it is precisely these areas that the media latches on to when it wants to convince the public that things are out of control.
It is true that the incidence of crimes against the person is somewhat higher in WA than in the remainder of the country (the incidence of property crime is closer to the national average). This is despite WA having an incarceration rate well above the national average, and higher than that of any other state. Unfortunately, it seems that the best our elected representatives can propose to deal with this situation is more of the same – send yet more people to prison for longer periods, with the assumption that it will somehow make them better people.
It is my view that the argument that our relatively high rate of crime against the person can be attributed to inadequate judicial sanctions is one that cannot be sustained. Something else is clearly amiss here. Why does our rate of violent crime remain relatively high while we are sending a greater proportion of our population to prison than other states? I don’t know what the answer is. Perhaps we would serve ourselves better if we were to direct our efforts towards establishing and dealing with the causes of violent crime before it actually happens, rather than obsessing over how to appropriate retribution against the perpetrators. Unfortunately, though, there are rather few votes in this approach.
