Getting Justice Wrong: Myths Media and Crime
By Nicholas Cowdery
Allen & Unwin, 2001
$19.95
BY KAREN FLETCHER
Law and order politics have been the ticket to success for many an ignorant and talent-less politician or media "commentator". A really juicy sex murder, preferably of a child, can be the making of any pompous nobody with a good line in apoplectic outrage.
The trouble is, there aren't enough really good murders to go round. But never fear, if you can't insinuate yourself with a family who has lost an angelic-looking child to violent crime, you could always get your photo taken with an elderly woman too frightened to leave her house because of the latest "crime wave".
Whipping up fear and then feeding from it has become politicians' most effective election strategy and the quickest way to increase their media profile in Australia, as in the US and Britain.
One outcome of all this is that there are now more young men in custody in the US than there are registered unemployed. Australia's prison population has doubled over the last decade; the proportion of Aboriginal people in prison has also increased. As ever, the prisons are full of the poor — but more than ever before.
Nicholas Cowdery is the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions. Cowdery is pissed off at being given orders by a bunch of ignorant politicians with nothing but re-election on their minds. To his great credit, Cowdery has stood up to NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr on a number of occasions in recent years, to the point that they are no longer on speaking terms.
This book is his cry of rage.
Cowdery's Getting Justice Wrong is a small collection of commentaries from "behind the lines" on various aspects of criminal justice: drugs, juvenile crime, domestic violence, policing and sentencing. Many of the ideas are progressive: de-criminalisation of drugs, opposition to "zero-tolerance" policing and mandatory sentencing, support for increased funding for health, education and welfare instead of prisons and police.
Cowdery maintains the quaint view that the legislative, executive and judicial arms of government should be separate and that it is inappropriate for politicians to dictate the judicial process.
The phenomenon of a small number of police, prosecutors, judges and magistrates reaching radical conclusions on law and order issues is unsurprising. It would be impossible for anyone with half a brain to work in the criminal justice system and not notice that something is profoundly wrong.
However, Cowdery is, in the end, a prosecutor. Although he supports many progressive polices, he is also a strong advocate of a massive national DNA database and of evidentiary provisions to weaken an accused person's right to silence.
The profits from the sale of this book will go to the Office of the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions so, if you feel like reading it I suggest you borrow it from a library.
[Karen Fletcher is coordinator of the Prisoners' Legal Service in Brisbane.]