AUSTRALIA should “consider alternatives to prison and ways to reintegrate people into community life as responsible fellow citizens”, Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) president Archbishop Philip Wilson said.
Archbishop Wilson made the comment in a letter promoting the ACBC’s Social Justice Statement for 2011-12, which will focus on prisons and the justice system.
The statement, to be issued for Social Justice Sunday on September 25, is called “Building Bridges, Not Walls: Prisons and the Justice System”.
In the statement, the ACBC urges Australians to think about the conditions in our prisons, and to ask who are most likely to find themselves there and why.
The statement points out that, between 1984 and 2008, while rates of crime either stayed steady or fell, the number of Australians in prison per 100,000 people almost doubled.
It said the majority of Australian prisoners come from the most disadvantaged sections of the community: the underprivileged, those suffering from mental illness, and especially indigenous people, who make up about 2.3 per cent of the Australian population but about a quarter of those in prison.
The incarceration rate for young indigenous people was even higher, the statement said.
Archbishop Wilson, in his letter promoting the statement, said that “fundamental to the Christian life is our shared responsibility to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit the prisoner (Matthew 25:31-46)”.
“Among those who make up Australia’s growing prison population are people who are often already suffering the burdens of dispossession, illness, poverty and alienation,” he said.
“While society will always require prison as a last-resort punishment, it is time for us as a nation to consider alternatives to prison and ways to reintegrate people into community life as responsible fellow citizens.”
Archbishop Wilson said the statement addressed five key challenges relating to the criminal justice system: fear campaigns about law and order; social factors that can contribute to crime; the dignity of prisoners; adequate support for people coming out of prison; and realistic alternatives to incarceration.
“No crime can diminish the fact that we are all created in the image and likeness of God,” he said.
“In our parishes and in our communities, let us consider how we can offer support and make a difference for our brothers and sisters in prison and seeking bridges to a new life.”
The statement will be launched the week before Social Justice Sunday but copies can be ordered now from the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council.
