Victoria paying more than $1m a day to keep unsentenced prisoners in jail

The Greens say the Daniel Andrews government’s ‘tough on crime politics’ had left the state ‘spending millions every week’ locking up disadvantaged offenders for minor offences. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

The number of people in Victoria’s prisons who have not been found guilty of a crime has grown more than 140% in just under a decade and now costs taxpayers more than $1m each day.

Despite this, the Andrews government hasn’t reviewed changes to the state’s bail laws that have contributed to the increase, delaying the possibility of reform until after the November state election.