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Prison population grows as NSW police get more funding: Law Society
The NSW Law Society has warned that court backlogs and delays will worsen if the state government fails to balance its investment in the courts by pouring money into policing alone.
Melissa Coade
President of the NSW Law Society, Doug Humphreys, said that delays in the justice system will become worse should the state government continue with its uneven distribution of resources.
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A recent announcement that the NSW government would devote new funding to bolster policing across the state was welcomed by Mr Humphreys. However, he cautioned that that money would need to be “matched” by extra resources for the court, the Director of Public Prosecutions and to Legal Aid NSW for the system to cope with the “down-stream effects of more police”.
“Resourcing police must be backed up by adequate resourcing for the rest of the justice system,” Mr Humphreys said.
“Many victims of crime are already languishing for long periods waiting for justice because the courts do not have sufficient resources to manage the existing cases.”
According to Mr Humphreys, over the past year NSW criminal courts have had to contend with a 2.2 per cent growth in the number of defendants. This growth had led to an exacerbation of what was an already overcrowded prison population, he said, and added to long delays in the number of matters before the courts.
“NSW is spending more on prisons than ever before,” Mr Humphreys said.
“Surely as a society we would prefer to spend our money on more teachers, nurses and fire-fighters than keeping people locked up who could be more promptly dealt with if the courts were able to.”
