South Australia prison population expected to grow to more than 3500 inmates by mid-2022
A TOUGHER stance on violent assaults and an increase in arrest rates among women is expected to push South Australia’s prison population beyond 3500 inmates over the next five years.
A TOUGHER stance on violent assaults and an increase in arrest rates among women is expected to push South Australia’s prison population beyond 3500 inmates over the next five years.
Corrections Department boss David Brown has revealed numbers will reach 3568 by mid-2022, despite new laws offering a wider scope for placing offenders on home detention.
There are now about 2900 people incarcerated in SA but that number has peaked above 3000 during the past year. Government data shows increasing rates of assault, including domestic violence incidents and sex attacks, are landing more people behind bars.
The number of women in jail has also risen 79 per cent over the past decade and this trend is expected to continue.
The growing prison population had caused authorities to rely on 114 so-called surge capacity beds across the state this financial year, Mr Brown told a parliamentary committee yesterday. The extra beds cost more than $4 million.
Mr Brown added that the State Government had allocated funding for 308 permanent new beds in prisons across the state by June 2019.
“We anticipate that in the short to medium term, we will be able to reduce our reliance on surge beds,” he said, conceding that his department was likely to overspend its total budget, allowed by Treasury, by about $500,000.
Opposition corrections spokesman Stephan Knoll, meanwhile, expressed alarm at the predicted growth in prisoner numbers and questioned how the Government planned to manage the influx.
Mr Knoll said that in February last year, the Government had expected 3207 prisoners by mid-2021.
“Prison overcrowding has already contributed to an increase in violence in our prisons and this creates unwarranted pressure on correctional services officers, who deserve a safe working environment,” he said.
Correctional Services Minister Peter Malinauskas said if new prisoners entered the system “we’ll make sure there’s a bed for them” — however, he urged a greater focus on efforts to reduce crime and rates of reoffending.
Recent changes to the law have enabled the courts to order more people to serve sentences on home detention. Mr Malinauskas said home detention was an “incredibly important tool” — but added it was used “sparingly and where appropriate to do so”.
Mr Brown said corrections staff were monitoring 727 offenders in the community, using GPS tracking devices, as of April 10.
The state leases a total of 1270 devices and monitors the movements of offenders wearing the bracelets 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
