No law and order Renaissance for New South Wales

The ancestral home of French philosopher Michel de Montaigne has a museum with graphic depictions of the modes of punishment of his time. Montaigne was one of the leading intellectual forces in the Renaissance in France. He wrote about law and order, crime and punishment and sought a more humane regime.

"How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!" Montaigne wrote in 1588. He was referring to the racks, garrotes, blades, knee splitters and chairs of torture in use then because administrators wanted to be seen to be tough on crime.

So after a sobering visit to the magnificent château it was depressing to hear NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell on March 20^th promise a more severe policing regime than his opponents in next Saturday's election.

Depressing because most voters actually know little about the causes and effects of crime and punishment. And what they do know is often wrong. As Montaigne – a reformist mayor of Bordeaux as well as a philosopher – also said, "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know".

What we should know is that more police and more prisons are seldom cost effective. Each inmate costs the public purse more than $50,000 each year – sometimes a greater sum than the amount involved in the original crime.

Higher imprisonment rates do not make communities safer. The USA imprisons 756 people for every 100,000 in the population. Australia imprisons 129 and France 96. The USA is no safer for its vast prisons network. The opposite is true.

Gaols are often used as part of the oppression of racial minorities. Here in France, Muslims comprise about 6% of the population but 56% of prisoners. Aborigines in NSW make up only 2.1% of the population but are 21.3% of prisoners. For Indigenous men, the percentage is higher. Half of all juvenile detainees are Aboriginal kids. These rates are rising, not falling.

Prisons continue to be schools for crime. Many of those released from NSW prisons reoffend within a year. This also is a global problem. A document released by WikiLeaks last December quotes (a senior French official reporting that "It is often the shock of prison, detailed the RG report, that transforms petty criminals into Islamic extremists".

NSW for all its trumpeted failures under Labor has not had a law and order crisis. The auditor general's 2010 report to Parliament shows the overall crime rate in New South Wales was stable or has fallen compared with previous years.

A report from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research states that "property crime has declined 5.6% over the past 24 months, while personal crime and alcohol related assault remained stable over the same period".

The Auditor-General's report affirmed that NSW had some of the best results for court timeliness in Australia. It found also that the state performs better than the national rate for successful community correction orders, 80.0% to 71.2%.

These were the positives. On the negative side, the proportion of the adult population sent to prison was 11.6% above the national rate. And the state's rate of an individual's return to prison, 42.9%, was higher than the national average of 39.3%.

O'Farrell's stance cannot be based on increased clamour for action on crime from the electorate. The report 'A statistical snapshot of crime and justice in New South Wales: Statistical indicators 5/10' published by the NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service reveals that the proportion of people who believe there is a problem with crime in theirneighbourhoodhas declined since 2001 from 55.4% to 45.1% in 2008.

So there seems no doubt that the Coalition's tactic is a cynical electioneering ploy. Creating fear where none exists and then feeding off it worked well for the Coalition in Victoria last November. The tactic is electorally effective, if socially destructive.

There was one bright moment in January 2009 when the Coalition's shadow attorney-general Greg Smith promised to end the law and order auction. In a dramatic change of tactics, Smith advised that the Coalition would reduce the prison population and cut crime by investing in mental health services. As any intelligent, well-informed administrator should.

"That's where my pragmatic view comes in," the former NSW deputy director of public prosecutions told the Sydney Morning Herald. "Our recidivism rates are far too high and this harsh line that we have been taking, with the Government almost proud of the size of the prisons, and proud to build more, in my opinion, shows a lack of care for people in prisons, their families and the community generally, because it is short-sighted"

But of course this was too sensible to last. Smith's leader Barry O'Farrell has entered the final week of the election campaign with promises of 550 more police officers and a new helicopter. He has outbid Labor by $200 million.

But there is hope. There is a time-honoured tradition in Australian politics of new governments breaking election promises straight after the election because funds are not available. "We knew the former government mismanaged the economy. But we had no idea it was this bad. There is a black hole. So now we can't [insert expensive promise here]. We just can't. Blame them, not us." It is a familiar refrain.

So let's hope the promises Barry O'Farrell breaks are those to impose a costly stricter penal regime. Let's hope he invests instead in mental health services, support for disadvantaged minorities and education.

As Michel de Montaigne urged: "Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its vulnerability you will have to dig dungeons for ages."