Thread by @jaimeloma

Tweeps, tonight is my last night home alone (yaay!!). I thought that instead of watching the tennis, I could put together a bit of a thread with some ideas that have constantly assaulted me over the last few days. #auspol

1.The first one has to do with this #Africangangs issue, which I have been describing as a government fueled racist outbreak. I find it deeply upsetting.

2. Another intrusive thought has been the issue of an Australian Republic, which I think is more desperately needed than most of us realise.

3.The last one has to do with the latest book I have been reading: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (@harari_yuval). It has been unsettling me in a big way (this is not necessary a bad thing). Btw, read it (and Sapiens as well!)

4. The idea (a bit ambitious, almost surely a bit arrogant / full of myself) is to try to bring together all three recent obsessions, using the underlying theme of “some problems and potential solutions for Australia”.

5. Starting with the despicable #Africangangs issue, @NyadolNyuon @yassmin_a @MakMayek @crimsonchat @fatherbob and others have tweeted and retweeted, so all I'll say is: it would have been a great opportunity to look at causes of crime and how we can keep our community safer!

6. True fact: the clear link between disadvantage, crime and imprisonment. E.g. half of Vic's prisoners come from 6% of postcodes. Prisoners are far less likely to have finished school and have dramatically higher rates of substance abuse, mental illness, acquired brain injury.

7. Even more importantly, prison experience is often multi-generational: the children of prisoners are six times more likely to be imprisoned than their peers. In reality, the path to adult criminality meanders inexorably through various markers of disadvantage.

8. If we really want to make the community safer, we really need to invest in initiatives that reduce disadvantage. We also need to ensure that children and yp affected by severe poverty, drug abuse, family violence and other sources of complex trauma are properly supported!

9. We can't do that with a Child Protection System that is in severe disarray (and I am not having a go at the dozens of decent and committed workers who are part of the system).

10. Now my way of bringing @harari_yuval into the conversation is by looking at some systemic issues that, unlike #Africangangs, are real problems facing our society, and looking at potential solutions.

11. Alright, so fixing inequality and reducing poverty are two major solutions to reduce crime. I don't think I can expand too much on Twitter, but for me two ways of doing this are #justicereinvestment and drug decriminalisation and regulation.

Far out, I feel I am losing steam!! :)

These two solutions are linked to two other major problems in our society: sky rocketing prison costs with terrible return on investment and a failed war on drugs that only makes the problem worse.

13. By the way, in over ten years working in Broadmeadows, nobody has said to me: today I was looking for drugs but the police is doing such a good job that I could not find them! We are literally flogging a dead horse!

14. More problems: our education system. We need to make it more inclusive (trauma informed: essential). We need to put more emphasis on a rich and stimulating curriculum. We need to prepare our kids for a world changing faster than ever before. Stop this testing nonsense!

15. Alright, time to bring the issue of the republic into the thread… before that, wake up everyone!!

16.How the hell is the issue of Australian Republic linked to crime? I could start by pointin out that the wealth and power of 99.9% of monarchies in the world can be traced back to violence and injustice, but that is not the argument I want to use today.