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% 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% 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 $3bn a year, based on Productivity Commission figures.
Inmates on remand awaiting court sentences (11%) and women (10%) were the fastest-growing groups of prisoners over the last year.
Indigenous prisoner numbers rose 7% in line with the overall increase but they remain grossly overrepresented in jail, making up 2% of the general population but 28% of the prison population.
According to the ABS Recorded Crime - Offenders, 2015-16 :
Since the beginning of the time series in 2008–09 the number of offenders has increased by 12% (or 46,474 offenders). Over the same period the offender rate increased by less than 1% (from 2,006 to 2,023 offenders per 100,000 persons aged 10 years and over).
The number of female offenders increased by 5% nationally to total 97,304 between 2014–15 and 2015–16.
The number of male offenders remained relatively stable (increasing by 49 offenders to 323,949) between 2014–15 and 2015–16.
In 2015–16, median age was younger for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander offenders, as compared to non-Indigenous offenders, in all of the selected states and territories.
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