You wouldn’t know it by watching the nightly news, but crime in New South Wales has dropped by 75 percent in the past 15 years. Yet imprisonment rates are rising at an alarming rate – in fact, incarceration is at its highest since federation in 1901.

So why is punishment up when crime is down? In this talk, Garner Clancey will reveal the political agenda and media coverage fixated on ‘getting tough on crime’, pushing our prisons to breaking point and costing taxpayers $2 billion a year.