The NATSILS make this submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee to highlight the value that justice reinvestment approaches could have in addressing the steadily rising imprisonment rate across Australia, and in particular the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in custody. Imprisonment is expensive and at the rate that imprisonment is rising in Australia, the cost is becoming unsustainable.
Imprisonment is also often ineffective in its ultimate goal of rehabilitating offenders and making communities safer. Justice Reinvestment is an alternative approach that not only has fiscal rationality at its core but also works to address the causes of offending so as to prevent crime in the first place while also more effectively rehabilitating those who do offend.