RECORD NUMBER OF WOMEN IN JAIL

A JUMP in the number of women behind bars is due to a crackdown on fraud.

There are now a record 3310 female inmates in Australia — up two-thirds on a decade ago.

Female prisoners represent just 8 per cent of the overall prison population but a whopping 28.7 per cent of female inmates are serving time for fraud.

The push to catch social-security scammers has seen the government agencies hire private detectives to conduct intense covert surveillance on women, specifically single mothers, according to a report from the Australian Institute of Criminology.

The report found women are twice as likely to be convicted of welfare fraud offences as men.

With analysis from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the institute and leading criminologists also found: THE women’s prison population has increased by 65 per cent in 10 years and at a greater rate than the men’s population, which has increased by 50 per cent in the same period; WOMEN are over-represented for theft (15.9 per cent of all prisoners with a theft offence) and drugs (11.5 per cent of all prisoners with a drug offence); ABORIGINAL and Torres Strait Islander women are the fastest growing segment of the prisoner population. They are 21 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-indigenous women; APPROXIMATELY 60 per cent of the women in prison are mothers or primary carers to children, while about 80 per cent of indigenous women in prison are mothers; and REPEATED studies have found up to 90 per cent of prisoners have experienced abuse in their lives from a young age.

Professor Julie Stubbs, co-director of the Centre for Crime, Law and Justice at the University of NSW, said although female incarceration cannot be attributed to a single factor, there is a direct link between convictions and law enforcement of welfare payments.

“Areas like fraud and drug crime are really shaped very much by police and prosecution discretion, so if Centrelink has a crackdown, or the police in various locations have a crackdown around particular categories of crime, that detects more offences,” Prof Stubbs said.

Unlike male prisoners, who are most likely to do time for violent offences or sexual assault, women tend to serve sentences for low-level or petty crime.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, who make up 2 per cent of Australia’s female adult population but 34 per cent of the female adult prison population, are disproportionately affected by serving sentences for low-level offending, such as failing to pay a fine.

Experts warn overusing incarceration can have major detrimental and intergenerational consequences.

A prisoner costs the taxpayer close to $110,000 each a year.