AG at Estimates: Graffiti

General Purpose Standing Committee No 4 | Attorney General and Justice | 26 October 2011

Mr DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: I turn to the graffiti laws that the Government has been attempting to get
through Parliament. Was there any consultation with your department or with you about the proposed terms of those graffiti laws?

Mr GREG SMITH: I think I took advice. They took part in a Cabinet minute process. I am not sure that we discussed it in any great detail. There has been discussion about the setting up of the graffiti hotline. There has been discussion about the retention of Graffiti Action Day and discussion about assisting local councils that previously had not been assisted. When we were in the drafting stages there was some discussion about the implementation of the P-plate provisions and that sort of thing. That is all I recall. There was no brawl, no argument.

Mr DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: Do you accept that the pattern of laws, putting more juveniles before the courts, is contrary to your oft-repeated statements about removing juveniles from the criminal court system and taking a different and fresh approach to juvenile justice in New South Wales? It is directly contrary.

Mr GREG SMITH: I do not accept it is directly contrary. I think the graffiti situation is in plague proportions. It is a very serious area of potential criminality. It is a bad crime in itself and it leads to worse crimes—that is my belief. By putting them before the court, in a sense, we are helping to save them from a life of crime.

Mr DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: It is directly contrary to your work development order

Vandals to clean own mess

Nino Bucci | The Age | 20 October 2011

IT STARTS with a can of spray paint and often ends behind bars.

But Frankston police are confident a new program will stop the first graffiti mark leading to a lengthy criminal history.

For the first time in Victoria, youths facing a criminal damage offence can have the charges dropped if they take part in a program that includes painting over daubed walls.

Frankston City Council spends almost $400,000 each year removing graffiti from about 30,000 square metres of property.

Senior Constable Renee Bloomfield, who developed the program as youth resource officer, said too often police dealt with offenders who started as teenage vandals before graduating to more serious crime. The program will be launched today and rolled out more widely if the pilot proves successful.

''The earlier the young person enters the criminal justice system the greater the likelihood they are going to remain embroiled within it,'' she said. ''If we can get a young person at 13 or 14 and put that intervention in place we can stop that cycle.''

O’Farrell’s ineffective graffiti legislation

David Shoebridge MLC | 25 August 2011

Legislation passing through the NSW Parliament that sends more children to court for graffiti will do nothing to reduce graffiti and is a step backwards, according to the Greens NSW and the submission of the Law Society of NSW.

This legislation will push more children into our courts system and is not supported by any evidence that it will reduce graffiti vandalism. The Greens NSW continue to advocate non-punitive community-based solutions, such as those instituted in the Balmain electorate by Leichhardt Council.

The legislation

The Graffiti Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 amends the Children (Community Service Orders) Act 1987 and the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 to compel courts to impose community service orders for graffiti offences that require young people to remove graffiti (unless it is not reasonably practicable).

It also changes the Graffiti Control Act 2008 to allow courts to make orders concerning drivers’ licenses of those found guilty of committing graffiti offences of owning graffiti implements. These include increasing probationary periods by 6 months and limiting the number of demerits that can be accrued.

However the fundamental change in the Bill is that it compels young people to attend court. It does this by removing power from the police to deal with young offenders by way of an on the spot fine or youth justice conference instead of court proceedings.

Once passed police will have just two options, send the child to court or let them go.

Tagged and Bagged: Tagging at Hip Hop Gigs

Liz Galinovic | 3DWorld | November 2010

GRAFFITI IS CELEBRATED AS ONE OF THE ESSENTIAL FOUR ELEMENTS OF HIP HOP, BUT THE WORK OF SOME OF ITS EXPONENTS IS OFTEN COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE WHEN IT COMES TO THE MUSIC ITSELF BEING GIVEN A LIVE FORUM TO SHINE IN. LIZ GALINOVIC EXPLORES THE SOMETIMES STRAINED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VENUES, PROMOTERS AND TAGGERS OFF THE BACK OF A FLOOD RELIEF GIG WHICH ALMOST COST THE SYDNEY SCENE ANOTHER VENUE.

Def Wish Cast’s 2006 album The Legacy Continues… features a track with an interesting breakdown between verses that goes something like this – “Aww ya kidding. C’mon I want ‘em now. Oh my god, where are the guys? I need Def Wish Cast on now! Have you seen the tags at the back?” This gruff, angry voice concludes the track with a proclamation that has become famous around the hip hop traps: “Right. No. More. Hip hop.”

The owner of this voice is most likely a member of DWC, but the person the voice pretends to be is the owner of a Sydney hotel who called an end to the various hip hop events his hotel had played host to because of the tagging scourge these events brought with them. He is neither the first venue owner, nor the last, to close doors to hip hop specifically for graffiti-based reasons.

In late January, a debate erupted on a social networking site over a hip hop show held at Sydney venue Tone as a fundraiser for Queensland flood victims. The event had been a large success, organisers raising $11,000 while the venue donated a chunk of their bar money to the cause. Unfortunately for the venue and the organisers, some of the punters donated an abundance of ink to the toilet cubicles and scratches to the mirrors.

“This has been going on for years unfortunately,” Sydney-based hip hop publicist and promoter CJ York says. “Where promoters try to bring these niche events to the public, and the punters do get out there and support, there always seems to one or several dickheads that feel the need to deface an area of the venue and as a result, the venue closes its doors to hip hop.”

While the organisers of the benefit gig raged at this lack of respect, one particular point continued to resurface – that graffiti is an integral part of hip hop culture and tagging is an integral part of graffiti. You can’t have one without the other.

Graffiti and hip hop music are symbiotic – they’re bound to each other. Seus, a Sydney-based graffiti artist and MC tells that when the two cultures were taking off in the States they were destined to enter into a life long love affair as they came out of and raged against the same socio-economic struggle.

Quentin Dempster - Interview with Greg Smith

730 New South Wales | ABC1 | 3 June 2011

Do graffitists get off too lightly?

The Question | SMH | May 21, 2011

THE LAWYER NICHOLAS COWDERY

GENERALLY, no, I don't think so - and there are real limits to what we can do about them, anyway. The Attorney-General says that graffitists are at war with the community and that they should go to prison - but prison has not stopped any wars so far and it is not the best remedy in most cases.

Rather than being soft or hard, light or heavy after the event, we need to be smarter in dealing with the causes and effects. People who are (understandably) offended by graffiti or whose property is damaged by it should still not expect their feelings to dictate the way the offenders are dealt with. The world and its inhabitants are more complicated than that, as the criminal justice system recognises.

If graffiti is done without the consent of the property-owner, then (artistic or not) it is intentional damage to property and ''graffiti vandal'' is an apt description. But we are still not at the jailing point. Imprisonment is the punishment of last resort, not first reaction.

Who are the graffitists? By and large they are juveniles and young adults. Their brains have not matured. They undertake this criminal conduct for a wide range of reasons: a desire to be known, identified and approved by their peers; competition with or other pressure from peers; lack of legitimate purpose leading to the thrill of offending and escape; resentment of property owned by others; an attitude that state-owned property is fair game and nobody really suffers; maybe just because they can.

Most of the offenders are unlikely to be caught and most are unlikely to offend again. Even the vast majority (70 per cent) of juvenile offenders who are prosecuted never reappear in a children's court - another 15 per cent appear twice. So why should any heavier outcome be required for the small percentage who are caught? Reoffending rates for juveniles are not affected by imprisonment - it has no deterrent effect - so what would a heavier response achieve?

Prevention is best. Keep the possible offenders lawfully occupied and protect the property - by lights, barriers, CCTV, police and security patrols, surface coatings - whatever it takes. And promptly remove graffiti when it happens - by using offenders, if that can be arranged.

Nicholas Cowdery is the former NSW director of public prosecutions.

THE DIRECTOR TAMARA WINIKOFF

I AM not going into bat for every kid with an aerosol can who wants to leave a souvenir of their existence in places where mere mortals would fear to tread, climb, dangle, squeeze or levitate, as much as I might admire their gymnastic prowess and fearlessness in the face of potential imminent death. But skilful street art is another matter.

Broadly speaking, street art falls into these categories: art for art's sake; and social and political observations; or both.

Some of it is simply playful or beautiful; the other is perpetuating the legacy of political commentary that we know has appeared in the street at least from the time of the Roman Empire. Either can be challenging and push the boundaries of our collective certainties.

It is not necessarily going to give everyone instant gratification and may be asking us to excavate under the surface of meaning. But what a delight it is to spot the sly little cartoon down at ground level or a witty, irreverent visual pun as you round an unexpected corner. It can add delight and zest to one's day. If it sparks a good, juicy debate, it's doing us an intellectual service.

Art in public should be part of everyone's experience of a lively, cosmopolitan city. Who does not savour the pleasure of travelling to old cities in other parts of the world to get an insight into their culture, past and present, through the legacy of art and architecture? The public space that we all share is of our own making and a reflection of the power structures that determine the expression of who we think we are. The palette of the urban environment is as diverse as are humans, and thus is at times hotly contested.

What seems to get up the noses of some of the city fathers is that street art has not gone through the exhaustive process of climbing up and down the bureaucracy for sign-off at every level. It has not been authorised and possibly sanitised. But we need to remember that mostly it is ephemeral and self-regulated for quality by the local street artist communities.

It is interesting that the state's nannies are usually much more protective of our collective sensibilities than the community itself.

Graphic marking of ceremonial sites is part of many ancient cultures, including our own indigenous rock art.

Street art is a great Australian democratic tradition and we should be encouraging and supporting the best it has to offer.

Tamara Winikoff is the executive director of the National Association for the Visual Arts.

Art Crime: Graffiti Wars

Matthew Newton | The Crime Report | 22 February 2011

Law enforcement agencies, judges and politicians around the country are stepping up their battle against graffiti artists. But the crackdown may only have emboldened them.

In March 2009, a man identified by Pittsburgh Police as “HERT,” the city’s second most-wanted graffiti artist, entered the Allegheny County Courthouse for an appearance stemming from a prior arrest.

But when he arrived, he was informed that police also had warrants for his arrest on 69 misdemeanors and four felony counts of criminal mischief based on estimated damages from vandalism caused by the 22-year-old’s alleged activities of spray-painting his tag on public and private buildings, railroad properties, and nearly a dozen neighborhoods in and around Pittsburgh’s downtown corridor. HERT was then handcuffed and escorted from the courtroom.

TV cameras were there to capture the moment, and Detective Daniel Sullivan of Pittsburgh Police Bureau’s Graffiti Task Force, made sure the media knew the significance of the arrest.

“He was the number-two tagger in the city, hitting more than 100 pieces of property, and that doesn't include outside boroughs,” Sullivan told reporters, adding that HERT had caused an estimated $212,000 in damages to private and public property during his graffiti career.

The case of HERT, who is still awaiting trial, illustrates what some observers believe is an increasing crackdown on graffiti across the country. While, nationwide statistics on graffiti crime do not exist, the reallocation of police department budgets and resources suggests that cities are increasingly using prosecutions as a weapon to end the practice. For example, Graffiti Tracker, an Omaha, Nebraska-based company, which investigates graffiti crimes under contract with law enforcement agencies or sells them analysis software, is doing a thriving business. According to Timothy Kephart, Graffiti Tracker’s CEO, the company has over $1 million in contracts with police departments in 45 cities, towns and municipalities.

And more cities like Pittsburgh have created “vandal squads” dedicated to capturing high-profile graffiti artists, similar to the force New York City instituted decades ago.

But the subtext of this battle is cultural.