Spending billions on prisons and extra police in Budget won’t solve society’s woes, warns VCOSS
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Pre-budget figures published by the Victorian Council of Social Service confirm fears that the State Government has spent billions more on locking people up in new prisons and putting extra police on the streets in the last decade than investing in services like child protection, affordable housing and mental health that would prevent crime.
Ms Smith said VCOSS was looking for today’s State Budget to redress the balance and spend more on the kinds of programs known to create a better and safer society. “More and better funding is needed for housing, mental health, early childhood education and child protection. These areas have been grossly underfunded for the last decade.”
According to VCOSS spending on prisons has doubled in the last decade to nearly $600 million, and the cost of policing has more than tripled to nearly $2 billion.
Chief Executive of VCOSS Cath Smith said, “This is a classic case of the Government acting once the horse has bolted. The evidence suggests that if the Government had spent more tackling the cause not the consequence of crime, like intervening before children are put at risk, spending more on young people, or better assisting people suffering with mental illness we wouldn’t now have overflowing prisons and pressure on policing.”
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VCOSS
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