Fiona Patten’s Reason Party candidate for South Eastern Metro, Laura Chipp, has released the party’s Modern Criminal Justice policy today, which will reduce re-offending and save Victoria $216m.
The centerpiece of the policy, costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), is to adopt Spain’s Diagrama youth re-education model which is a proven success.
“This is strong evidence-based policy. This model is proven to dramatically reduce re-offending by addressing the causes of children’s offending behavior,” Ms Chipp said.
About 24 years ago, Spain had a youth detention system similar to Victoria’s. Today in Spain, there is a 75 per cent success rate of re-integrating youth offenders into society, without further offending.
Ms Chipp’s career has focused on youth crime, as the principle statewide prosecutor for youth crime at Victoria Police, as well as the managing lawyer in youth crime at Victoria Legal Aid.
She said youth detention facilities in Spain rarely experienced violent incidents, and security guards represented only a small percentage of staff. Most of the employees were made up of teachers, psychologists and social workers who were responsible for the delivery of individualised plans for each child.
“If we drastically reduce re-offending, we drastically reduce crime and that’s what makes our community safe,” Ms Chipp said.
“What we know is that most crime is committed by someone who has committed a crime before. If we break that cycle early, we are all safer.”
“There is simply no logical reason why the major parties aren’t adopting evidence-based policy like this. Instead they are prioritising populist optics over outcomes.”
“Tough on crime doesn’t work. We must be smart on crime”.
Ms Chipp is the daughter of former senator and founder of the Australian Democrats, Don Chipp, who coined the phrase “Make the bastards honest”.
The Reason Party’s full Modern Criminal Justice policy can be found here.
You can read more about the PBO costings here.
