Australia’s prison population hits record 20-year high

Jail numbers grew at more than 4 times the rate of country’s population in 2 decades

Australia’s jail population has hit a record high of more than 41,200 prisoners, as a 20-year surge in incarceration rates shows no sign of waning.

The daily average of full-time prisoners in custody rose 7 per cent to 41,204 over the year to the June quarter, according to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Monday.

That represented a 133 per cent leap in prisoner numbers since the June quarter of 1997, meaning the national jail population grew at more than four times the rate of the overall population over the last two decades.

The cost of running prisons in Australia is likely to have hit around $3 billion (Dh11 billion) a year, based on Productivity Commission figures.

Inmates on remand awaiting court sentences (11 per cent) and women (10 per cent) were the fastest-growing groups of prisoners over the last year.

Indigenous prisoner numbers rose 7 per cent in line with the overall increase but they remain grossly over-represented in jail, making up 2 per cent of the general population but 28 per cent of the prison population.

Keith Hamburger, who formerly ran Queensland’s jail system as the state’s first director general of corrective services, said prisons “basically around the country at the moment are overcrowded”.

But “just building more prison cells and stuffing people into them is not the answer”.

Most in jail were on short sentences and with a lack of treatment programmes to help stop reoffending. The system cried out for “a different approach from our policymakers”, Hamburger said.

“We need high-security prisons for dangerous long-term offenders,” he said. “But we are building far too many prison cells for people who churn through, spend weeks or a few months on remand, a few months in jail, then go out again.”

Surging prison numbers were one result of populist “tough on crime” lawmaking by state governments including mandatory sentencing and tougher hurdles for bail, Hamburger said.