Lines Drawn
After the riot in Redfern this past February, a commission was put together to review the causes, as well as how the events were handled, so as to come up with a plan of action to address the conditions in the community overall. In the past few weeks, a number of minor officials have stepped forward to point their fingers: drugs, specifically heroin, is the root cause, and there wouldn’t be drugs, these pundits claim, except that a needle-exchange service operates there. This is beyond stupid. Needle exchange serves a vital role in reducing the spread of AIDS and other blood-borne communicable diseases, not just between the junkies, but even secondarily, since less infection means less exposure. There’s also a reduction in criminal enterprise, since fewer users are going to have problems getting kitted out. Drug injection rooms, like the one in Kings Cross, may increase the number of junkies and dealers in a defined area, but they also affect a decreased crime rate, at least because they become easier to monitor, and a lessened risk of disease exposure. These are good things. It’s true that junkies commit crimes, but they don’t tend to riot. They’re usually considerably less active than that, mostly because they can’t afford the exposure to law enforcement, but also because their using narcotics. Dealers aren’t inclined toward riot or even inciting others to riot either. They’re not going to raise their profiles for the police any more than their clients are, and they don’t care where they operate, because the junkies will always follow them. The problem is that in an underprivileged neighborhood, the residents are less likely to be invested in improving the overall conditions, less likely to be landlords (who, absent from the neighborhood, are already less concerned with raising property values) concerned with the character of their tenants, and this makes it easy for criminals to take up residence. Clover Moore looks to be on top of the situation more than anyone on Macquarie Street, and I’m more happy about her incumbency every time I hear from her.