Recent court cases in the ACT saw, finally, victims of crime, or at least their families, get some closure. It reminds me of an old Cher song (also covered by Nancy Sinatra) “Bang Bang, my baby shot me down”, in terms of a sad song about a woman betrayed by her lover.
The ACT has among the lowest number of police per capita in Australia and has done for many years. The problem is that the Labor Government – and until a year ago, very much influenced by their coalition partners the Greens – are not backing up our police with sufficient resources.
If you have been the victim of crime, or someone in your family has, you can see the hard work of the police and how frustrating it must be for them. Canberrans paradoxically feel quite safe, and this is a testament to our hard-working police force.
Issues with sentencing and prosecution compound this. You can just think of families like that of Matthew McLuckie, tragically killed by a woman with no driver’s license, driving on the wrong side of the road at 177kph in a stolen car. Three years after this awful accident, the woman pleaded guilty to culpable driving. Matthew’s father, Tom McLuckie, spearheaded a community campaign to make Canberra’s roads safer through sentencing guidelines, more police presence, and a review of rehabilitation programs for criminal offenders.
Tom’s campaign highlighted issues like our high incarceration rates for repeat offenders, both youth and adults; the exponential growth of our Aboriginal incarceration rates; the low finalisation rates for sexual assault in the ACT; that our youth justice facility Bimberi is full and understaffed and under scrutiny, as is the Alexander Maconochie Centre (our prison); our Director of Public Prosecutions and our Courts are seriously under resourced too, which is part of the reason it took three years for the matter of Matthew’s death to reach this point. The DPP explained in Budget Estimates in June that her office is underfunded and extra money for another witness assistance service officer would not meet current demand.
In another recent case, the release of brutal double murderer Scott Alexander McDougall was stopped. The families of victims Julie Tattersall and Struan Bolas had to undertake sustained advocacy to achieve this result.
Advocates for victims of crime, and their families, such as John Mikita, whose own family has been deeply affected by a tragic crime, stress how important communication with families is. I spoke with John Mikita recently, and you can hear more about his advocacy on the podcast (Bite-sized politics).
We must remember that every day, the police put their lives on the line for us. Sadly, we recently saw the death of two police officers in Victoria. We need to back our police and ensure they have the resources they need to do their jobs, keeping us all safe, and going home safely themselves at the end of their shift.
And we also need to look at our sentencing and rehabilitation. When will the government ensure community safety is a priority?
For further discussion on this topic, head to Bite-sized politics (around 15 minutes easy listening) on Spotify.
