13 February 2015 | General Interest
Nancy Jeffrey, Save the Children’s Northern Territory Manager, is the latest expert to raise concerns about the extraordinary rates of Indigenous incarceration, and the current response that “clearly isn’t working”.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Ms Jeffrey called for a greater focus on justice reinvestment as an effective method to combat the issue.
“Instead of throwing more money at a system that isn’t reducing reoffending, we need to redraft the blueprint on how we address issues of Aboriginal disadvantage, moving it closer to the ‘justice reinvestment’ approach,” Ms Jeffrey wrote.
“This means shifting some of the spending allocated for prisons towards community-based programs and services — in education, housing, drug and alcohol treatment and prevention, employment and healthcare, for example — that address the underlying factors behind young criminal behaviour.”
The feature from Ms Jeffrey can be viewed online through The Daily Telegraph website.
