New jails needed in Queensland but justice system overhaul for non-violent crime could be cheaper Budget option

Queensland is faced with a huge bill for new jails or it must find a cheaper way to deal with non-violent crime, writes SARAH VOGLER

Paying for new prisons is a huge hit to Queensland’s budget. Picture: AAP/Jono Searle

WHEN it comes to Queensland’s precarious budgetary position, $6.5 billion is a lot of money.

It is more than the estimated cost to construct southeast Queensland’s Cross River Rail project. It is more than a third of the State’s total health budget. And it is more than the State estimates it will reap in coal royalties this financial year.

According to the Queensland Productivity Commission’s draft report into the state’s correctional system, $6.5 billion is also how much the State will need to spend on new jails by 2025 if the current rate of growth in prisoner numbers continues.

“The rate of imprisonment in Queensland – the number of prisoners per head of population – has increased by 44 per cent between 2012 and 2018,” the draft report found.

This came despite falling crime rates over the last two decades.

Incarceration rates are growing in Queensland. Picture: AAP/Jono Searle

“If current trends continue, by 2020 the high security prison population will exceed capacity by between 2900 and 3300 prisoners,” the QPC report stated.

“The construction of additional infrastructure to house these prisoners, and to address existing shortfalls, is projected to cost approximately $3.5 billion.

“By 2025, the high security prison population could exceed current capacity by between 4600 and 5800 prisoners, requiring government expenditures totalling $5.2 billion to $6.5 billion in infrastructure costs alone.”

It found the median prison term is short at just under four months and that most – 65 per cent – were for non-violent offences. For every 1000 prisoners released on average each month, more than 50 per cent could be back in prison or under supervision within two years.

The QPC has suggested home detention and decriminalisation of some non-violent offences, such as illicit drug offences, as options to curb the growth in prison population. Improved rehabilitation would also help avoid the budgetary hit.

“Options that will have a meaningful impact on the prison population will require significant and politically challenging changes to the way things are done,” the QPC report states. And it is not wrong.

For a state of voters used to politicians spending election cycles painting themselves as tough on crime and the other side as soft, those recommendations are not likely to be an easy sell. So far, both Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her deputy, Treasurer Jackie Trad – who ordered the investigation – have been loath to commit to the draft recommendations.

They were almost in lock-step as they insisted the issue was complex. Right now the last thing they want is a headline dubbing them soft on crime or drugs. Especially when they are also attempting to tackle the scourge of ice.

Ms Trad did start to make the financial argument when quizzed on the findings last week, but she was careful not to tie the Government to the draft recommendations just yet.

“The question that we want the community to engage with is how much do we continue to spend building prisons to incarcerate people for non-violent offences,” she said. “We need to ask ourselves whether another $6 billion for infrastructure costs in the next five years is money well spent.”

Labor will wait until the QPC’s final report is delivered in August to consider its findings. But Governments rarely order such work just to ignore it.

Eventually Queensland voters can expect to be asked whether they would prefer to spend the cash or see the Government overhaul the justice system moving forward.

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