Sophie Russell & Eileen Baldry
‘Three charts on: Australia’s booming prison population‘, The Conversation, 14 June 2017
Ten years of ABS statistics on remand versus sentenced prisoner numbers (remand numbers going up more), Indigenous imprisonment rates (going up), women in prison (going up), and Indigenous women prisoners compared with total women prisoners (going up).
The prison population in Australia is at its highest-ever recorded level. Over the past decade, the number and rate of people imprisoned across all Australian states and territories has risen rapidly … Prisons are expensive; expenditure on prisons in Australia in 2014-15 was A$2.9 billion. So, it is important to ask whether this rapid increase in remand, Indigenous and women prisoner numbers and rates is justified.