Alternatives to Imprisonment Report Released

01 April 2011

The Sentencing Advisory Council has released a report on community attitudes towards the use of alternatives to imprisonment in Victoria. The report is based on the Victorian component of a national survey of public attitudes to sentencing, supported by the Australian Research Council.

Survey participants were asked about the use of alternatives to imprisonment as a way of addressing the increasing number of people in prison and as a way of dealing with certain types of offenders. The prison alternatives suggested to participants included supervision, counselling, treatment and community work.

The report found that there was clear support among the survey respondents for using alternatives as a way of addressing prison overcrowding: 74.3% of respondents preferred to ‘increase the use of alternatives to imprisonment’ while 25.7% of respondents preferred a policy of ‘build more prisons’.

People were especially supportive of alternatives to imprisonment for mentally ill offenders, young offenders and drug-addicted offenders.

The survey found that support for the use of alternatives to imprisonment was predicted by lower levels of worry about crime and lower levels of punitiveness.

The Alternatives to Imprisonment research paper is available on this website.

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