Twittering courts

Baillieu government punts on a prison construction led recovery … More prisons … More crime … More political swagger ... Waiting to test the new freedom from double jeopardy … Twittering courts … Yarraside Yarns with Sylvia Varnham O'Regan 

Under Baillieu there's been a 7.6 percent increase in the prison population

SINCE getting its posterior onto the Treasury benches in December 2010 Ted Baillieu's government has made good on its tough-on-crime election rhetoric. 

The police can now issue $240 fines to people using offensive language in public; two-year mandatory sentences are proposed for 16 and 17-year-olds who commit acts of gross violence; and plans for more prisons have been heralded. 

The prisons priority has a fascination all its own. 

The proposed $400 million PPP 350 bed medium-security monster is an extension of the existing Ararat prison in western Victoria. 

It's in deep trouble because the consortium building it, according to the Financial Review, is $100 million short of the required capital. 

St Hilliers, the Sydney-based building firm, is in some strife, and is struggling to pay sub-contractors. 

This week, The Age reported that the Chinese made doors and windows do not fit - always an encouraging structural characteristic for a jail.   

The project is teetering on the edge, yet the government says it will not step in to save the consortium. 

It steadfastly confirms it will also build a new $500 million-plus men's prison at Ravenhall in Melbourne's west which, even optimistically, won't be ready till 2017. 

The expanded Ararat facility was meant to be able to cope with the soaring prison population until Ravenhall was open for business. 

Prison numbers under the current government have risen from a daily average of 4,586 in the middle of 2011 to 4,935 as at the end of last month. 

This increase of 7.6 percent in the incarcerated population is fuelling a prison-construction led recovery for Baillieu's Victoria. 

This is a big shift in gear from the days of the Bracks government, which held off building a massive super-max prison - instead investing more money in diversionary and treatment programs for offenders. 

The consequence of that was that for many years Victoria had a much lower rate of imprisonment per 100,000 adults than NSW (103.6 cf. NSW at 184.8). 

Victoria was also spending half the amount per year on prisons than NSW's annual allocation of $1 billion plus.  

You can see Justinian's report here: Raw prawns and tabloid beat-ups. 

Yet, without the comparably high rates of expenditure and incarceration, Victoria had a crime rate that was no higher than NSW's. 

Already the effects of the Baillieu-era policies are evident. 

More severe criminalisation of offences, higher sentences, more police powers, more prisons - more crime. 

Victoria Police statistics, released in February, show a nearly 10 percent rise in crime between December 2010 and December 2011. 

Don Weatherburn, the guru who crunches the figures at the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in Sydney, says that typically a 10 percent increase in the rate of imprisonment produces a three percent reduction in the serious crime. 

It's an incredibly expensive way to reduce crime and recidivism is horrendous - 60 percent of those who have done time, will do time again.

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Elizabeth Membrey: coppers anxious to bring on another murder trial if new evidence emerges

LATE last year, Victoria followed NSW, South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and passed the Criminal Procedure Amendment (Double Jeopardy and Other Matters) Act. 

It's based on based on a model approved by the Council of Australian Government and allows for retrials where there is fresh and compelling evidence pointing to the guilt of an acquitted person. 

On April 28 a verdict in the Elisabeth Membrey murder trial was not what the police or Membrey's family expected. 

Shane Andrew Bond, 45, was acquitted of murdering 22-year-old Membrey 18 years ago.  

On December 6, 1994 she had been last seen leaving the Manhattan Hotel in Ringwood in Melbourne's east, where she worked as a bartender. Her body has never been found.

Following the verdict, Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles, who worked on the case for over a decade, said he believed a third party was involved in the murder, possibly helping the offender dispose of Membrey's body. 

He urged this person to come forward, with the offer of indemnity from prosecution. 

In the faint expectation that a third party was to emerge, maybe then Victoria's overhauled double jeopardy law could get its first nervous run. 

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NEWS of the Membrey verdict spread quickly, helped by the Supreme Court of Victoria tweeting it at 10.11am:

On my reckoning the Supreme Court of Victoria is the only one in Australia currently using Twitter on a regular basis - @SCVSupremeCourt. 

This is bound to change if the experience of the US is anything to go on, where we find @USSupremeCourt, @illinoiscourts and @hawaiicourts - to cite a few. 

The ICC is also Twittering at @IntlCrimCourt. 

In a promising move, the Australian Institute of Judicial Administration with The Council of Australian Tribunals (COAT), is holding a conference early next month on the issue of social media and tribunals. 

And things aren't all that bad for the coppers in the social media world. Victoria Police Facebook page has quickly picked up over 13,000 "likes".

And you can Twitter me here.  

Sylvia Varnham O'Regan reporting