January 19, 2017

Our punitive nation: Incarceration and where it is taking us as a society

Dr Richard Evans

Dr Richard Evans has published an essay in Arena Magazine that takes stock of the current climate of punitive politics in Australian society.

The full essay can be read here.

Comments

3 Comments

Dr Antoinette Saliba 0 / 0
21st January 2017 at 7.51am

Thank you Richard for such a down to earth and truthful appraisal of our current situation. I have found throughout my years of working with offenders of all types and also academic research, one of our main problems as a society is a lack of empathy towards all offenders and the idea that an individual's particular circumstances once they have committed a crime become not only irrelevent to 'commonsense' ideology, but just a range of excuses aimed at obtaining a lighter sentence. Prison has never been corrective since its conception and it seems now as less about corrective ideology and more about a populist form of containment. The idea that prison should only be used as a 'last resort' and only for the most serious types of crimes, is just that, an idea. The facts do not illustrate that at all! Dr Antoinette Saliba

Dr Antoinette Saliba 0 / 0
21st January 2017 at 7.27am

You are so right, but the problem with your suggestion is simple. Such articles do not sit well with mainstream media outlets as they have such a vested interest in the current 'commonsense' mentality that actually challenging that with the factual truth of the situation is a crime!

annette Stockman 0 / 0
19th January 2017 at 2.37pm

Please publish your article in every daily newspaper; in fact it should be shouted from the rooftops in order to penetrate the mindless, political, get tough, approach that is completely useless. The question must be put, what sort of a community do you want to live in and what sort of legacy do you want to leave for future generations. Annette Stockman

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Our punitive nation: Incarceration and where it is taking us as a society

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