Instilling fear: How law-and-order campaigns are ‘dog whistling’
Written by: Jhanvi Parashar
Analysis
Criminologist with lived experience reveals the true nature of law-and-order as paradoxical to community safety
Rain bucketed over Sydney city streets yesterday as the community cast their early votes in the Civic Tower.
Last year, David Crew, the manager of the Yarkuwa Indigenous Knowledge Centre in Deniliquin, concerningly attended a meeting with NSW’s Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOSCAR) following Labor’s sweeping draconian bail act policies.
Crew criticised these policies as facades when concerning community safety. He understood them as duplicitous in their aim to jail the community more than protect them.
This election, Criminologist, Tina McPhee criticises the Coalition for weaponising the concept of community safety with ‘law and order’ rhetorics as the focal point of their campaign.
With lived experience in prison, Tina highlights the dangerous impacts of encapsulating all forms of violence as an umbrella term. She emphasises that law-and-order’s role in Dutton’s campaign are dog whistles, and that prison should always be the last resort.
How is ‘law-and-order’ presented as protection to violence for voters?
Formerly incarcerated, Tina urges voters to consider the implications of expanding ‘law and order’ outside of its familiarly understood concept. Photograph: Jhanvi Parashar
Currently undertaking her PhD, Tina understands the collateral consequences of conviction within law and order and actively campaigns and collaborates with various political and social actors within the justice system.
“Advocates for punitive approaches to ‘law-and-order’ such as Peter Dutton, think about ‘worst case scenario’. Context and nuance are left out of the image” says Tina.
Sir Anthony Bottoms coined this phenomenon as ‘penal populism’ in 1995. David Garland defines this phenomenon as a form of political discourse that directly or indirectly refutes the views of experts and practitioners. Instead, politicians aim to ironically appeal to ‘the people’ that they actively aim to suppress.
In 1988, Rusell Hogg and David Brown underwent the Coalition government’s sweeping policies in Western Australia. These policies aimed to increase prison sentences instead of nurturing non-legal diversionary programs. With this, they eagerly co-wrote ‘Rethinking Law and Order’.
In their book, Russell and David consistently challenge the status-quo by revealing how ‘law-and-order policies’ only give politicians the facade of adeptly handling ‘violent crime’. They believed methods of fearmongering were rhetorics that constructed a familiarly understood approach to crime that ironically increased community harm than promised safety. The two encapsulate the paradoxical need for punishment and ‘tough-on-crime’ approaches as being politically and strategically placed as the norm.
What once benefited the community, becomes overturned by politically placed ideas of crime control. Redirecting society from the lesser-known successes of restorative approaches and leaving crime control to be preferred over productive community initiatives.
Peter Dutton has recently announced his launch of ‘Operation Safer Communities’ to “crack down on crime from the border to the backyard” by investing more than $750 million through a comprehensive national package.
Tina outlines the current nature of reporting organised crimes and gangs. She discusses their manifestation as moral panics that allow to be weaponised by the major parties. All that is achieved through the community’s fear of violence. Tina advocates that introducing more law-and-order ends up harming the local community more than it does protecting.
Tina analysed the recent kidnapping and killing of a mother in Bankstown and the abuse of her eight-year-old child. She concludes that the community’s focus was on the violence of the act rather than what it meant for the community.
Recently, the NSW Police revealed the woman’s partner’s alleged involvement with an organised crime network. To this, Tina was surprised at the “despicable commentary” on the mother’s proximity to crime. She was disturbed that the initial narrative that spoke on the level of violence was conveniently no longer the main story. The focus shifted to the family’s contribution in the subject of crime.
Tina McPhee believed some of the Liberal Feminists’ commentary to be shocking and disappointing as she encountered their notion of the woman being “deserving” of the horrifying violence, all due to her alleged connection to a criminal group.
“We need to have more nuanced discussions about violence,” says Tina.
In their book, Russell and David addressed that if a politician did not approach with penal populism and continued nurturing the ideology that ‘prison is ineffective in addressing violent crime,’ or that ‘community led initiatives are crucial in Western Australia,’ they would inevitably fail at appeasing their voters.
Yet, the two authors hold out hope amongst their criminologist counterparts that ultimately, the call for harsher punishment may be weakened in the community as a response for safety. That the community will understand that prisons have never been the effective means of reducing community violence.
Prison as the norm and what it can do to the community
“Prison is understood as a capsule for all social harms,” says Tina. She allows herself to share the traumatising experiences of having been in prison and her return into society. Tina strips her emotions down to the bone to create the nuanced discussions she wants to see happen.
“I have often been told I don’t sound or look like I’ve been in prison,” to this sentiment, Tina exclaims “Who do you think is in prison? These criminals that Peter Dutton has made up. No, it is people like you and me”.
The Local Court is where the community seeks justice with 98% of criminal and civil matters finalised here.
“After you leave prison, the court no longer has jurisdiction. They don’t understand how far that punishment goes,” says Tina.
The adversarial system in Australia requires accused defendants to prove their innocence. A BOSCAR study done in 2014 revealed that approximately 83% of all committal matters in NSW ended in an early guilty plea. This may have been contributed by the Early Appropriate Guilty Plea Scheme (EAGP). The EAGP allows for a discounted sentence for offences when pleading guilty, where the earlier you plead guilty, the lesser your sentence may be. This system that has been criticised in encouraging guilty pleas from the community due to trial expenses rather than seeking justice and protection.
Tina’s context and history has often been dismissed in the eyes of the media, and she feels that her label cannot shift anywhere beyond her experiences with incarceration.
“I have entered places and have been told that I do not belong there. I went to university. I was given an opportunity, and I seized it,” says Tina. Tina attended her university classes with a bulky monitor clung to her ankle, weighing her down with each step. Yet, she persevered and graduated from her degree with a first in honours.
Tina explains that there is a diversity of people in prison, and that the community underestimates how many of those individuals do not belong there. She shares how she has been ostracised to the point of being excluded from the ‘community’ that the major parties aim to protect. Tina inspires others to evaluate how people are harmed in prisons and how their return into the community does not put a stop to the violence spoken of.
Tina dives into her experiences growing up and how prison always catches up to her in the worst ways. She shares walking with her partner where a man on the street was shouting hateful language towards him. Her partner was incredibly on guard, and an experience like this triggered a feeling she had felt all too much with her experiences in prison. “There is a lot of yelling in prison, it is never quiet,” she recalls.
And now, when she is conducting the simple act of sitting with her partner and encounters a form of conflict, Tina returns to what prison has instilled in her as the norm. “I feel that I will find ways of ignoring the harm caused or diverting from the problem,” says Tina. She instead engages in behaviours that fail to address accountability at times in the process of her healing and moving forward. “It can be a paralysing feeling of shame, and that doesn’t help anybody,” she says.
“In those times, I should acknowledge his feelings and understand the problem rather than ignoring it altogether,” says Tina.
Life after prison
Tina thought the further from prison she got, the better she would be. Yet her incarceration follows her every attempt of progression.
“Prison never leaves you,” says Tina.
“There are practices all around the world that welcome people back from prisons, yet we have policies that are working against all the things that we are supposedly for,” says Tina. She discusses the frustrating nature of the prison justifies itself and deliberately fails to consider the missing piece of community initiatives that truly allow for a safe return. “First they say that people like me shouldn’t be allowed in spaces, and when people end up back in prison, it is all our fault”.
“I am a white woman, I was raised middle class, with a community, with parents who worked blue collar jobs. It is also a matter of privilege, but even then, I still get denied in many spaces”. Tina addresses that once people enter prison, they will be limited and shrunk down to the label of ‘criminal’ with no consideration of the individual’s context.
“If I imagine my childhood, I can recognise it in colour. My 20s not so much, that was the time of the offence. It is all black and white,” Tina opens up about battling an eating disorder at the time. She then shares how this factor is weaponised to construct women as being manipulative and shape their criminality.
In an ideal situation, Tina would have wished to be dealt with a ‘transformative justice’ approach. Rather than being punished for the harm she caused, she hoped to have worked with who she harmed and engaged with restoration of money, faith and what was required to ensure she could appropriately take accountability.
“I am getting a PhD, I am an advocate, and I teach. I am trying to do all the ‘right’ things I can. And so, when things hit, they hit harder”.
Tina fears that her history with incarceration may follow into her old age. She is afraid that she may reach the age of her grandmother and be denied entrance into an aged care facility, all due to her having a criminal history.
Alternatives, and what voters should know
There was a time Tina was denied the right to vote. She now actively advocates for the importance of change in law-and-order promised by the major parties.
“In the Previous election, I was on home detention. I was so excited to partake in my democratic role to vote, so I am really upset about that. Then after, I got a fine for not voting,”. Tina shares how the Electoral Commission conveniently changed and clarified this on their website after she threatened to sue them. Amongst many other means of community othering, this solidified Tina feeling like a non-citizen.
“We, as a community, need to get better at accountability,” says Tina. She discusses the black-and-white thinking that cloud many conversations surrounding the community’s initial desire for law-and-order policies.
Tina is frustrated to see the lack of education of politics and voters taking politicians’ promises at face value when casting their votes.
“It is beyond law-and-order structures, it is about our individual role within it,” Tina emphasises the importance of coming together as a community and educating each other.
“When we invite politicians to the table, they might be coming there as collegial to collectivise and seek solutions. Or they’re there to prevent change,” Tina refers to her experiences with the major parties’ representatives treating lobby groups as mere checkboxes to tick off.
“It’s not like they don’t know, they absolutely know. Politicians are very skilled, they have policy briefs handed to them with easy access to expert opinions, but they continue to play the game of politics. The major parties, especially, are very performative,” says Tina.
Tina spotlights the importance of understanding nuances in violence. She believes that funding should be directed towards different localities in charge of their own communities with practitioners available for intervention. Understanding the nuances of violence is asking questions such as: “What can I do? If I call the police now, what if she doesn’t want the father removed? What does she need from me?” Tina outlines the many nuances of a hypothetical domestic violence encounter.
“It should be known that in many instances of violence, people barely call the police” says Tina.
When at a Closing the Gap conference, Tina had great conversations with certain police that aimed to turn children away from the criminal system. She points out that there are police doing quiet work that often gets left unnoticed. She agrees that she is also someone who is continuously learning and adapting her thinking, something she wishes to do until the very end.
