Hi, if you find this weblog, and are curious enough to want to know what is in it.
There is a long, first draft, totally unedited, essay, in the next post. That’s about all there is to it really.
However, I have recently learned a couple of further facts to the information within the essay.
It refers to a crime prevention pilot project, which was run through the Mission Australia group, in conjuction with an academic survey of the need. The essay is my initial response to listening to a former director of Queensland (the state I live in here in Australia) Corrective Services (aka the prison system) giving a public lecture about that particular prevention project.
What was being said was that it was a relatively effective project, but also that in the past there have been other effective projects, which potentially were more community minded, and more beneficial for all interested parties. Those past projects had not received the continuity of funding in which the full level of beneficial effect might have been able to be properly measured. So the professionals whom work to prevent crime among juveniles in particular, were highly concerned about why the particular project in question was now being funded as a trial. They expressed the opinion that it will be most beneficial to simply stay within one well established project, whether it is this new one, or returning to an earlier model. So the question about the way that such projects are funded was always in the background of my essay.
My new information is not, however, about the way such projects receive their funding. It is simply that I have spoken to a person whom had been employed to undertake the surveying for the academic component of the project, and particularly the surveying of the indigenous community in the area the pilot project was trialled. My informant is a resident himself of that same area, and has a brother whom works in the prison system, and also has other relatives involved in criminal activities, and a 20 year old daughter who insists that she will go back to her boyfriend when he gets out of gaol, much to her father’s dismay. He also has more distant blood relations currently serving prison sentences.
His opinion about the whole process of the pilot project, (we can assume that his opinion is with specific regard for the academic survey component), is that there were already existing projects which lost the necessary funding, and which were already obviously a better arrangement than what the new pilot project was attempting. He mentioned that continuity was the key to any success in the area of funding crime prevention.
Yet he was a little unclear about what the results of that part of the survey he was conducting had been. The academics are who would have been collating the statistics, while the employees who actually spoke to the community, were who could have had the opportunity to assess any very emotional responses as more notable. His practical attitude was simply that the whole pilot had not been observed in the community to be anything special, or anything especially likely to succeed, or even anything unusual. He was fully affirming my own position that perhaps those individuals whom had benefited directly from the pilot, were the exact individuals whom would be likely to have found any social assistance or community intervention beneficial. That is, those two or three examples (in my informants memory) of real crime prevention, are just the normal statistic, and not caused by the project.
So why then was a fuss made about the project? Having a former director of corrective services make a public talk at the Brisbane Institute, might not seem like enough fuss in one way, but it is certainly more attention that such projects are normally being given.
I ought also add to this information, that the locality where the project had been trialled, and where my informant lives, has high under-employment. That is, the area has a high level of unemployed adults, but whom could probably quite readily obtain employment if they sought it. This state has a rapidly expanding economy even today, and there is movement from other states into this City for employment. There is also a large quantity of seasonal work crop picking, which is within a days train ride from here, and for which an employee only needs a tent and a sleeping bag to accomodate themselves, along with a pair of hands and the back for hard work.
I will leave these additional comments with readers to assess why there might be any relevance to the information provided in the essay. The essay is mostly an attempt at analysis of the cultural influences in which crime flourishes.
