Tough love vital

A MEANINGFUL policy response to those guilty of committing a crime, either juvenile or adult, must contain two elements: Consequence and rehabilitation.

It cannot be consequence alone, nor rehabilitation alone, but must be robust, balanced measures of both.

Not hard or soft but both hard and soft.

A hard response because we care about the standards that underpin our society, and a soft response because you care about the individual and want to help reconnect them positively to their community.

Any effective punishment of course must be appropriate to the crime and not designed to humiliate. Its intent should be to deliver a meaningful response to the offence – requiring recompense, apology and repair of the damage to community – and to promote behavioural change.

Punishment is justice being seen to be done, and reinforcing common community values by being seen to be done. We should resist any judicial response that creates uncertainty in the mind of a child or an adult that stealing, destruction of public property or the wilful injuring of another member of our community is anything else but wrong.

Punishment marks the boundaries that guide the framing of a cohesive society. This boundary defines the standards we value and aspire to as a society and individuals.

A punitive response to a breach signals to the individual in breach that they have fallen short but should also say that they are capable of better choices. A rehabilitative response is designed to enable them to reach for that standard.

The reality is that people make choices, and choices have consequences. By diminishing a punitive approach and emphasising instead the “special circumstances” that caused an offender to offend feeds the idea of “victimhood”.

So rather than affirming that every person is endowed with the dignity of will and capacity to make choices, the socially and personally damaging choices are validated and the offenders’ dignity is denied by saying they are powerless to choose otherwise and someone else is to blame.

This approach carries the deceptive and dangerous implication that crime is a societal disease rather than a breach of a moral code; consequently an offender is treated with therapy not punishment.

Once the idea of “victimhood” is introduced, the social- ly damaging actions of an individual are excused, leaving the community to clean up the mess while a hand is extended to the offender.

In this scenario, right and wrong, good and bad become subjective values rather than objective standards. Moral bearings are therefore discarded and children and families left confused. In this new world we can have a person stab a policeman or commit more than 50 serious offences and the backstory of the offender becomes the main story and the breach to community standards and the harm inflicted on victims is overlooked.

Recasting the offender as a victim harms the offender by supporting the idea that because they can’t be held responsible for their actions they are incapable of free choice, their humanity is diminished and consigned to a lesser existence as a powerless victim.

Those who believe strong punishment alone fixes the problem risk damaging an already damaged individual and creating a greater problem.

Those who argue the offender should be treated lightly or absolved of personal responsibility, with responsibility for the crime transferred instead to society for creating the problem, devalue both the individual and the society they live in.

Yes an offender may have his or her judgment impaired at the time, may have had a very difficult family life or some other condition, but denying them an encounter with reality by holding them accountable inflicts further harm on both.

Those who care must come together and work to deliver a tough-love response.

We need to respond wisely and courageously because every indication is that it is likely to get worse unless we redefine the boundaries to guide our families and communities. What would a policy response to convert these ideas into practice look like?

If every problem is seen as a nail then the only solution is a hammer. A variety of tools are needed but whatever the approach, the strong, practical themes of consequence pointing to personal responsibility and to rehabilitation pointing to a way forward are essential.

A sound judicial and correction system must aim to both defend community standards and repair the damage to individuals, offenders and victims.

Terry Mills is the independent member for Blain and a former chief minister of the NT.

‘Recasting the offender as a victim harms the offender by supporting the idea that they can’t be held responsible... ”