It has now been almost 18 months since the Director of Public Health declared a Public Health Emergency in Tasmania due to COVID-19.
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Here in Tasmania the pandemic resulted in the deaths of 13 people (the last recorded in April 2020) and a radical shift in how people could live their lives, go about their jobs, and how they could relax.
Among the moves to keep the Tasmanian community safe from the COVID virus, major changes took place in the criminal justice system, changes that are still having an effect, even when in a lot of ways our lives have returned to normal.
Tasmania is a very safe place to live.
It has the lowest murder rate in Australia, including pre-pandemic, and according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) some forms of theft (including theft from a person or a retail premises) have decreased almost 30 per cent since 1995.
These same ABS statistics demonstrate that COVID measures, including the initial state-wide lockdown in March/April 2020, have probably contributed to crime numbers going down further still, with a 20 per cent decrease in each category of robbery and unlawful entry recorded.
The crime where we have seen a shift upwards during the past 18 months is sexual violence - a crime that disproportionately affects women as victims.
However, many victims do not report to the police for months, years, or decades which means that this increase is in part due to victims feeling more confident to report their experiences.
Behind these statistics lie real people. Real people who have offended, who have been victimised, and Tasmanian communities.
COVID has impacted how the criminal justice system operates for good and bad.
First the good.
The pandemic resulted in some small evolution in the prison system.
Connection between prisoners and their families is now easier as Zoom video visits have been rolled out.
COVID put a stop to in-person visits but connection between those who are incarcerated and their families on the outside is easier due to a wider availability of video calls that, pre-2020, were reliant on volunteers to deliver.
Visits (video or in-person) are incredibly important as pro-social familial contact plays a strong role in rehabilitation.
Staying connected with children, partners, parents and siblings who are not imprisoned can all allow a prisoner to not feel as isolated, not seek anti-social, criminal connections and ensures that positive interpersonal relationships continue to develop.
On release there are people around the former prisoner to support their reintegration.
While video calls are far from perfect this is certainly a step in the right direction.
The pandemic has also highlighted the importance of not relying on prisons.
While Risdon is still well above capacity, alternate forms of punishment are being chosen by magistrates and judges, such as the recently introduced home detention scheme that allows offenders to serve their sentences under strict conditions within their communities.
During COVID this has been an excellent option.
However, these minor wins are outweighed by the continued entrenchment of problems in the system, especially the prison.
At the beginning of the pandemic the Apsley Alcohol and Drug Treatment Unit at Risdon Prison was shut down and converted to a maximum-security unit.
A woefully underfunded facility to begin with (12 beds only to service 600 prisoners, and only available to male prisoners serving sentences longer than six months), there is currently no alcohol or drug rehabilitation services available to incarcerated individuals in Tasmania.
Unrest also continues at Risdon.
In May 2021 five male prisoners set fires in their cells due to severe overcrowding at the prison.
Tasmania has not followed the example of other states during COVID to decrease prisoner numbers, in fact they have increased.
NSW had the number of adult prisoners fall almost 11 per cent and in Victoria there was a 13 per cent drop in prisoner numbers.
Continued underfunding of the successful Court Mandated Diversion program (otherwise known as the drug court) means that magistrates and judges have nowhere but prison to send people convicted of drug-related offences - the prison where there is no treatment for these addictions.
Amidst this, our courts continue to be backlogged even more than pre-COVID due to restrictions.
The Attorney-General, Elise Archer, acknowledged to a parliamentary inquiry in March 2021 that this backlog will not be dealt with until the courts return to full capacity. The backlog is expected to take at least a year to clear.
This means longer remand times in prison for those charged with a crime and awaiting trial - further putting pressure on the prison system.
It also means longer wait times for victims and their families to have their day in court to speak out about how they have been affected by crime.
Pandemic measures in the justice system have entrenched the problems that were there pre-COVID.
And in the meantime, populist politics is continuing to drive arguments for a "tough on crime" stance that supports a prison in the north of the state, arguing that it will solve the current problems with Risdon.
The criminal justice system in Tasmania is not working - an overwhelmed court system sending people to a new prison run with the same philosophy of warehousing prisoners not rehabilitating them will not solve this issue.
COVID measures are just highlighting the problems that have always been there and why we need to change how we respond to crime in this state.
- Dr Vicky Nagy is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Tasmania. This article is part of a series for Social Sciences Week