What's behind the numbersįormer magistrates, lawyers and criminal law scholars all say a tightening of bail laws, often as a political response to high-profile crimes, is responsible for much of the rise in remand. These short stints can have severe implications for women with children, he says, as even short-term imprisonment can lead to the involvement of child protection authorities which 'can last for a very long time'. So if you're going in and out a couple of weeks at a time, there's just no way that's going to help you deal with the cause of the offending.'

'Most corrections systems don't even start reintegration planning until four weeks into your sentence.

'A short period in prison is long enough to disrupt your housing, education, employment, or medical treatment, but it's not long enough for any meaningful rehabilitation or reintegration support to be put in place,' he says. Meanwhile, about one in five people on remand end up spending less than a month in prison, a phenomenon Dan Nicholson, the executive director of criminal law at Victoria Legal Aid, says is particularly concerning. The time prisoners are spending on remand is also creeping up, with the latest figures showing the majority of unsentenced prisoners spend at least 3.5 months in prison, up from 2.8 months in 2005. That figure is up by 66 per cent in real terms since 2012-13. Productivity Commission data shows that operating prisons cost state and territory governments more than $4.4 billion in 2021-22, excluding capital costs. On top of the personal cost to those on remand, he says there's a significant financial cost. 'That's a distortion of what ordinary sentencing principles would call for.' Many would not receive a sentence of imprisonment for more minor offending, but will have served time on remand by the time their case is finalised,' says Gray, who is a patron of the Justice Reform Initiative. 'Some of these people would be pleading not guilty. While the prison population is at its lowest since 2017, ABS head of crime and justice statistics William Milne notes that the aftermath of COVID-related restrictions 'may still be impacting criminal activity and the justice system'.įormer judge Ian Gray, who served as the Victorian Chief Magistrate for more than a decade until 2012, says that's 'a huge number of people in custody and detention'. The total figure has fluctuated through the pandemic and it is difficult to know if growth in prison populations is slowing, as courts have continued to work through backlogs worsened by lockdowns and public health restrictions in some states. Between 20, the Productivity Commission found Australia had the third fastest growing prison population in the OECD, behind Türkiye and Colombia.Īustralia has had more than 40,000 people behind bars for several years, up from less than 20,000 in the mid 1990s. The number of people held in Australia's prisons has been steadily climbing for decades, well faster than the rate of population growth. Because I'm privileged, I had money, I got out, but they're not going to.' The shifting demographics inside prisons 'I'm angry, and I'm also really angry for the other people in there. 'It was confronting, it was a different world, and I had to learn those rules very quickly,' she says. Now 48 and back in the community, the scars from Donovan's time behind bars remain. 'We eventually got her bail, but her time in jail was long and harmful.' 'Ace was clearly someone who had a drug addiction and was a poly-drug user … and was a person with no criminal history, so I wondered why police officers didn't recognise their personal circumstances and the fact that, if they were given police bail, they would be better off in a rehabilitation centre and getting the support they needed,' he says. Her lawyer Nicholas Stewart, who is also the vice president of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, says he is pleased Donovan was eventually able to get a fair trial, which took her circumstances into consideration. The most severe punishment she received was a two-year community corrections order, in August last year. She was convicted of multiple counts of possession of a prohibited drug, one count of supply of an indictable amount of a prohibited drug (a lower offence than large commercial supply) and one count of dealing with the suspected proceeds of crime. Almost two years after her arrest, the magistrate accepted the defence case that Donovan held the majority of the drugs found in her house for her own use.

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