Justice Reform Initiative report finds $200m spent on NT prisons

New report shows NT shows taxpayers are throwing millions at Territory jails despite three quarters of people having already spent time inside. Read the full details here.

A national report has revealed the disparity in prison and community corrections funding, fuelling calls for more taxpayer funds to be spent on addressing factors that reduce recidivism.

The Justice Reform Initiative report found more than $200m was spent on corrections and detention facilities in the 2020/21 financial year.

The report said three quarters of people incarcerated in the Territory had been in prison before.

“In 2020-21, the real net operating expenditure on adult prisons and corrections services in the Northern Territory was $189.2m .... the vast majority was spent on prisons ($146.6m) with only a fraction spent on community corrections ($28.9m),” the report reads.

More than $73m was spent on Territory youth detention in the past year compared to $40m on community services.

Report co-author Mindy Sotiri said research showed a reduction in recidivism when government addressed the drivers of criminal behaviours, such as poverty, education and health.

Dr Sotiri said when people were diverted from the prison system and given access to therapeutic services such as drug and alcohol treatment, mental health support and culturally appropriate programs, their chances of returning reduced.

The most recent data indicates there are 1748 people in Northern Territory adult prisons and 85 per cent are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, meaning the Territory’s rate of imprisonment is 944.7 per 100,000.

The national average is 210 per 100,000.

Aboriginal children make up 97 per cent of children in Territory Youth Detention and 87.5 per cent of children are unsentenced, according to the report.

Dr Mindy Sotiri, Executive Director of the Justice Reform Initiative. Picture: Tim Hunter.

“If people have access to a therapeutic unit and there is not the constant breaching of human rights that we see so often in our prisons, then people are much more likely to leave prison in a better space,” Dr Sotiri said.

“Pre-charge diversion programs do work; where police divert people out of the justice system and into community based services, place-based services or into Aboriginal-led services recidivism rates decrease.

“Also for people walking out the prison gate we know that if the right support is wrapped around people than we can reduce recidivism rates by up to 70 per cent.”

In 2019, the Northern Territory government released the Aboriginal Justice Agreement (AJA) that consulted with more than 120 communities to understand how it could reduce incarceration and impacts on Aboriginal people.

The AJA 2021-22 action plan aims to reduce offending and imprisonment by establishing alternatives to custody, community courts and reducing domestic and family violence.

It also looked to review and reform legislative provisions within the justice system that unfairly impact Aboriginal people through discrimination.

Furthermore, it identified a need for community-based sentencing options and non-financial options for payment of fines while increasing opportunities for prisoners to participate in high quality programs to reduce reoffending.

“We used cultural brokers and translators and we went to those 120 communities. If people wanted us back, we went back twice,” AJA director Leanne Liddle said.

“People don’t want to keep living with crime. People don’t want to live in the poverty and disadvantage that they currently live in and people see this (document) as a change agent that has no room for politics.”

Dr Sotiri said there was political will in the NT to reduce incarceration.

“I think that there’s cause for optimism,” she said.

“We have seen some bipartisan commitment, for instance, with the Aboriginal Justice Agreement in Northern Territory, which is, I think, unprecedented in the justice space.”

Dr Sotiri said there was also a growing movement in the public that understood prison doesn’t rehabilitate people.

“There’s nobody that doesn’t want a safer community and there’s nobody doesn’t want to feel safe in their community.” she said.

“I think that there is also a growing movement on the part of public, that prison actually doesn’t work to make a safer community.”

Justice Reform Initiative is an alliance of experts who share professional and lived experience of the justice system, and is supported by government, not-for-profit and individuals.