• Andrew Leigh

24 November 2009Why are prisons less a portal to a new life than a revolving door? Corrective services need to correct, not just punish, writes Andrew Leigh in On Line Opinion

IT’S A SET-PIECE of every Hollywood movie featuring an ex-con. A clean-shaven man walks out the prison gate carrying his possessions in a box under his arm, and puts his hand up to shade his eyes from the unfamiliar glare of the sun.

In 2009, more than 20,000 Australians got a “get out of jail” card, and walked through the gates of one of the 120 or so prisons dotted across the country. But the sobering fact is that during the next two years, nearly half of them will have been sent back. Some will get to play that prison release scene again and again.

Prisons do reduce crime, but mainly because of what criminologists call “the incapacitation effect” (when you’re doing time in Long Bay, it’s harder to hotwire a car). There may also be some deterrence effect, but this is small by comparison. And there is little evidence of a rehabilitation effect...

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Photo: Andrew Jeffrey