Satire: AUSTRALIA must address factors that make criminals more likely to go to jail than other members of the community, activists say.
While the Australian Institute of Criminology has found the rate at which criminals die in custody has been decreasing, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the proportion of prisoners in Australia who are criminals has remained steady at 100 percent.
This is despite the fact that 100% of prisoners claim to be innocent.
“Criminals are over-represented in our prisons,” activist Ima Lawless told thousands of peaceful protestors who had gathered to loot department stores in the city centre.
“We must work together to address the factors that contribute to high incarceration rates among criminals. These include leaving behind too many clues, a failure to avoid CCTV and boasting about their crimes on Facebook.”
Ms Lawless said Australia needed to look closely at the factors contributing to incarceration rates and the way in which our systems were handling criminal incidents.
“This requires a co-operative approach,” she told reporters. “Specifically, we want to see the police co-operating more closely with those who commit crimes by giving a nod and a wink, or simply looking the other way when they see a crime committed.”
Ms Lawless said reducing the number of criminals in contact with the justice system was key in addressing the number of criminals in custody.
“That’s why we want to defund a range of activities such as policing; to improve justice outcomes for criminals in Australia,” she said.
“For years we’ve thrown money at this problem and it has made no difference to criminal incarceration rates. We are now urging the Government to take funding away from the police, and you just watch outcomes improve for criminals.”
Police Commissioner Rob Banks said he was not concerned about a decrease in funding since the recently introduced “cops on bicycles” program had reduced spending on vehicles “and, more importantly, made us feel a lot better about the environment”.
But he said that despite awareness of the disproportionate level of criminals inside detention centres, programs implemented to address the issue had failed.
“Not that long ago we thought tying officers up in copious amounts of paperwork would help to reduce the number of offenders being arrested and jailed,” he said.
“More recently we have redirected police away from fighting crime and had them focus on the important work of becoming allies of minority groups.”
Commissioner Banks lamented that such programs had made little difference to anything at all but “the Police Department float at last year’s Madi Gras is something all Australians can be very proud of”.
“Oh, and it got us plenty of favourable coverage on the ABC,” he added as peaceful protestors chanting “a good cop is a dead cop” burned his bicycle.
“It’s only property,” he said, “And there’s no harm in it. They’re just letting off a bit of steam. In fact, I want to congratulate protestors on observing social distancing rules while rummaging through high-end stores. They’ve adhered to our strict one looter per 4 square metre rule.”
Meanwhile, Wokeopia University Vice-Chancellor Professor Cognitive Dissonance said it was difficult to disentangle crimes committed – such as theft, assault and murder – from legal issues that contribute to the incarceration of criminals.
“Laws that see criminals put behind bars are out of touch with common decency. Australia is lagging behind the rest of the world,” she said. “It’s not right that we are criminalising people for committing crimes.”
“The Government must set targets for lower incarceration rates and, if the targets are not achieved, cabinet ministers should be locked up.”
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