The Anglican Archbishop of the Sydney Diocese, Dr. Peter Jensen has called the rate of return to prison as 'unacceptably high' in an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald. This comes as the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows that Indigenous people are more likely to have done prison time compared to their non-Indigenous counterpart.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported that that Indigenous people were 13 times more likely to have done prison time compared to their non-Indigenous counterpart. Further the ABS result shows that Aboriginal people are over-represented in prisons where they make up a quarter of jailed offenders.
Archbishop Jensen wrote in the newspaper column, that prison population was growing at a faster rate compared to the growth in NSW. He said that politicians respond to our fear of crime by creating a "stricter regime of policing and imprisonment."
He said that one key test for the spiritual good health of a community is the quality of the prison. One of the challenges that God has presented us, wrote Archbishop Jensen was to be both "just and compassionate" to the treatment of those in custodial care.
"How are vulnerable people treated when they are at our mercy? As human beings, those who are being punished deserve a system that balances rehabilitation and restoration alongside retribution," Archbishop Jensen wrote. "God's challenge to us is that we be a community that is both just and compassionate in our treatment of others, especially those who are in our custodial care."