State’s $5 million tracking arsonists probably counter-productive
From the Liberals perspective, preferencing against the Greens is a highly practical and sensible tactic.
by Paul Read
As well as launching a small army of 150 arson officers as part of Operation Firesetter, the Victorian State Government is planning to spend $5 million on tracking arsonists using GPS devices, much like those used with some sex offenders. Of course, it’s a clever idea but it won’t have much of an impact on arson.
Why?
The Sunday Age recently reported government figures that the target population covers only five known arsonists in Victoria, which roughly matches published research figures over time suggesting a probable growth rate of only two extra people per year.
Now compare this with the actual number of suspected arson attacks in Victoria – about 3000 per year, of which only one per cent of offenders are convicted. Even among this small group, the typical arsonist is not the almost mythical ‘pyromaniac’ driven by uncontrollable urges. Whereas 15 per cent of sex offenders have been convicted of another sex crime, only one per cent of arsonists have ever lit an illegal fire in the past.
According to official crime figures, the Australian arsonist tends to be between the ages of 30 and 70 years (32 per cent) or else below the age of 20 (54 per cent). Adult offenders are mostly described as versatile and opportunistic, convicted in the past for violence or drug offences. Granted, 10 per cent will light a fire in the future, but the difference in past and future fire-setting is already due to successful surveillance of convicted offenders by Victoria Police.
Equally important to surveillance is the knowledge of local communities. Monash researchers leading the Australian Bushfire Arson Prevention Initiative have shown that local Victorian communities supply both formal and informal anonymous tips to police, the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and CrimeStoppers.
Where it becomes much more complicated is in the community and police handling of younger offenders where three subtypes tend to emerge, all of which need to be approached with strategies other than tracking or judicial punishment.
The first type is simply a group of kids causing an accident with experimental fire-play. This group needs parental and school-based education on fire safety, for which there are existing services ranging from the Juvenile Fire Awareness and Intervention Program run by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) to the work of Scouts Australia.
The next is a small subgroup of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. What this group needs is much more funding to help redirect them from the courts to existing health services across the Department of Human Services.
In both cases, the desirable strategy can only take place if parents and caregivers can make reports trusting the system to take a preventative rather than punitive approach, and certainly not fearing, whether right or wrong, that their children might be fitted with a tracking device.
Likewise, the third group covers highly disadvantaged children who have been subject to child abuse or neglect. This has since been confirmed across various studies, especially among girls (10 per cent of ‘arsonists’ are female). Once again, prevention and support is better than punishment after the fact. In this group, fire-setting can be a cry for help, much like self-harm or even child suicide.
In community surveys run by Monash, plenty of people want to ‘hang, draw and quarter’ the convicted arsonist – and would likely support GPS tracking – but an equal proportion of people want the suspect to get help and support. Many of these are parents and one of the biggest obstacles to reporting, apart from fear of revenge by an adult offender, is fear of community stigma being attached to self, family or friends. These findings tell us the community values a balanced judicial approach to a complicated problem and fears must be handled gently to encourage community reporting.
GPS tracking might help a little, but I’m not sure it warrants $5 million worth of investment when this money could go a long way towards supporting more effective measures that support local reporting of both child and adult offenders to police and fire-fighting agencies.
The Victorian cost of arson, according to recent Monash research, was recently upgraded to $1.1 billion and this doesn’t include actual human costs. We all know the outcomes and I, like many readers, was personally touched by Black Saturday. So whilst I commend the State Government for wanting to tackle arson across Victorian communities, GPS tracking should not be the first priority.
Since Black Saturday, work on arson has made leaps and bounds with collaboration across communities, CrimeStoppers, Victoria Police, MFB, the Gippsland Arson Prevention Initiative and Monash. None of us had access to $5 million to make it happen and most of our participants were volunteers, especially on the multi-agency Youth Arson Reduction project led by the CFA, which is now a world-leading initiative.
Funding for this work and for the operational needs of fire and policing services more generally was cut this year despite predicted increases in wildfires, faster spread and intensity as we come out of a wet season (later rising up to 25 per cent by 2020).
Australia should be celebrated as a leader in arson research, especially in Victoria, where it is a major problem that needs real solutions across many agencies and fire-affected communities.
There is no silver bullet.
Tracking convicted arsonists might make it sound like we’re all safe but it might have an unintended consequence, discouraging community cooperation with police and creating a false sense of security. GPS tracking follows a tiny group of convicted offenders; several more thousand deliberately-lit fires per year in Victoria still need community vigilance and reporting without fear of any punishment inflicted by the local adult offender or even by the state government in terms of children and youth.
Paul Read is a Research Fellow with the Australian Bushfire Arson Prevention Initiative focused on natural disaster’s resilience with the Monash Sustainability Institute.
A version of this article also appeared in The Canberra Times.