Another government agency a waste of money

The government’s announcement that it will set up yet another agency – at a cost of $1.5 million annually – to police “cyber bullying” is a gross misuse of resources. There are many better uses for scarce justice dollars than a new bureaucratic structure.

“The government’s announcement that it will set up a new agency to police ‘cyber bullying’ sounds like a very poor use of the dollars devoted to justice expenditure” said Garth McVicar, National Spokesman for Sensible Sentencing Trust.

“There are many other things scarce taxpayer money could be spent on in this area, including providing the courts with adequate resources to get Judges’ written judgments out and publicized” said McVicar.

“We already have a Justice Department. If cyber bullying is a significant problem, surely human and financial resources within the Justice Department can be reallocated or increased to meet this need, without wasting money on setting up a whole new structure?”

“We have recently pointed out the inadequacies of the Justice Department’s “three strikes” offender website. The answer was that improving its functionality would require too many resources, and that it would be too costly. Here we have a whole new government agency being set up to counter a problem which is surely less important than increasing general deterrence of violent offenders, which both the “three strikes” law and the website are designed to do.”

“We say spend money making existing agencies more efficient, rather than creating new ones.”

ENDS

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