Public Forum: Politicians, Promises, Prisons

Saturday, 21 April, 2012,
9.30 am – 12 noon, 280 Pitt Street Sydney.

Speakers
* Hon. Greg Smith SC MP, Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Liberal Party,
* Hon. Paul Lynch, MP. Shadow Attorney General ALP and
* Hon. David Shoebridge MP. Justice Spokesperson, Greens Party

CJC President, David Bitel said: “The CJC and the ICJA welcomed the comments of the new Chief Justice Tom Bathurst in January 2012 on the media’s role in undermining the public’s confidence in the justice system. To the credit of the major political parties and the media, the March 2011 NSWelections was free of any ‘law and order’ auction”.

Vice President, Hon. John Dowd AO. QC said “The CJC notes with satisfaction that the serious media now carefully and regularly report on the research done by criminologists on our justice system and which regularly demonstrates how our system is based on out of date theory and practices. Their research also outlines evidence based strategies for reform already in use elsewhere”.

Joan Bielski AO, Secretary of the CJC, said “The intellectual poverty of the present NSW justice system is best illustrated by the reports recently published by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and also the Australian Instituteof Criminology, which demonstrates how over the last ten or so years, the NSW prison population has doubled while at the same time the NSW crime rate has been fallingdramatically”.

The Community Justice Coalition (CJC) and the International Commission of Jurists, Australia (ICJA) are holding this public forum.

The speakers will elucidate on reforms recently being introduced in NSW, on reforms in train and policy development.
The public and the media will have opportunities to question the speakers on the implementation of their reform policies.

Prior to the March 2011 State Elections the Community Justice Coalition made a major submission to all the political parties, asking them not to indulge in a ‘law and order campaign’ and to commit to adopting a series of reforms designed to make the justice system more humane and just, to reform of the Bail Act, to give priority to prisoner rehabilitation, with a view to lowering the recidivism rate, to make the system more socially effective but less costly to the taxpayer, to develop a justice and prison system informed by the great body of extant criminology research and to making it more transparent and open to public scrutiny.
Community Justice Coalition