‘Worry’ over steady rise in prisoners

THE continuing increase in the number of prisoners in Tasmania is an “extremely worrying trend”, according to Prison Legal Service chairman Greg Barns.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released yesterday show the Tasmanian adult prison population has increased every year since 2014.

There were 596 people in Tasmanian prisons in June last year, an increase of 27 prisoners since the same time in 2016.

“It’s an extremely worrying trend,” Mr Barns said.

“Sending people to jail has a tendency to increase crime over the medium to longer term because jail is not a place where there is proper rehabilitation.”

Mr Barns said it was also leading to overcrowding at the Risdon Prison Complex.

“The prison is built for 550 [prisoners],” he said.

“The number now is over 600.”

Corrections Minister Elise Archer said: “We are not over capacity but we are very near it”.

She said the Government had already added 81 beds to the Risdon Prison Complex and would add another 61 beds this year.

A new prison in northern Tasmania to be built in coming years would add 270 beds, and a new southern remand centre would have 70 beds, Ms Archer said.

“Rehabilitation is high on my agenda,” she said.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show Tasmania has one of the highest well recidivism rates of all states, with 61 per cent of its prisoners previously imprisoned.

The national figure was 57 per cent.

The most common offences committed by the state’s prisoners were acts intended to cause injury, with 158 prisoners serving sentences for such crimes, followed by homicide, with 70 prisoners.

Tasmania’s adult imprisonment rate was 146 prisoners per 100,000 adult population, compared with 216 prisoners per 100,000 adult population nationally.

The adult prisoner population increased in all states and the ACT.

The statistics come from the bureau’s national prisoner census about people held in Australian prisons on the night of June 30 last year.