For the first time in six years, Victoria’s prison population declined in 2020.
This reversal of a 20-year trend was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Victorian government doesn’t appear to be making an effort to keep these numbers down, with the recent budget revealing that it expects the state’s prison population to reach record levels this year.
This brief decline in individuals incarcerated in Victoria appears to be viewed as a just a blip on the radar by the government, rather than a chance to reevaluate the series of policies that have led to the prison population skyrocketing.
Victoria’s prison population increased more than fivefold between 1971 and 2019, with the number of adults in Victorian prisons reaching 8,142 by the end of 2019.
With the COVID-19 pandemic leading to a reduction in crime and an increased likelihood of bail being granted, the number of Victorians in prison by the end of 2020 fell to 7,082.
This included a significant drop in the number of women in prison, falling from 522 women at the end of 2019 to 409 at the end of last month.
But while a number of countries, including across the US, look to keep prison numbers down have used similar reductions in prison populations to motivate efforts to keep people out of jail, the Victorian budget revealed that the state government expects the prison population to surge again in 2021.
This will likely be lucrative for the many private prison operators in the state, along with the construction companies contracted to expand existing prisons and build new ones, with a further $140 million allocated to a youth prison at Cherry Creek currently under construction.
According to the budget papers, the Victorian government expects there to be an average of between 7,996 and 8,440 men in prisoners daily, and between 582 and 614 women in prisons daily in 2020-21.
If the higher “targets” are reached, there will be a total of 9054 people in Victorian prisons by the end of the year, by far the highest level ever, with 140 people per 100,000 in Victoria in prison.
There was also an average of 21 boys and girls aged under 15 in custody in 2019-20, with the state government expecting this number to be between 15 and 25 in this financial year.
The state government is also ploughing ahead with its “prison infill program” which involves the construction of modular “pop-up” cells to be placed in existing prisons to cater for growing numbers of inmates.
In the 2019-20 financial year, there was an average of 160 boys aged between 15 and 17 in youth prisons, with the state government expecting to see this figure rise to between 210 and 250 in 2020-21.
According to the Council of Australian Governments, the real net operating expenditure per prisoner per day in Victoria as of 2018-19 was $317.90. If the Victorian government hits the higher end of its “targets” for prisoners, it will cost the state more than $2.8 million per day to incarcerate these individuals.
The predicted surge in prisoner numbers in Victoria will likely be welcomed by private prison operators in the state, with three prisons outsourced to the private sector.
Fulham Correctional Centre and Ravenhall Correctional Centre are run by GEO Group, while Port Phillip Prison is run by G4S.
Among others, construction firms will also benefit from the increase in prisoner numbers, with a number of tenders regularly being offered for work on existing and new prisons.
The latest state budget included $17.1 million for more remand beds at Parkville Youth Justice Precinct and $12.4 million for new youth justice staffing and programs, despite a significant reduction in the number of young people in detention in the state over the last year.
The Victorian government also set aside $141.2 million for the ongoing development of a new youth justice prison at Cherry Creek.
While the number of people in these facilities has declined significantly, overall funding for youth justice custodial services increased from $168 million to $233 million in the last financial year.
The Victorian government also doesn’t expect any improvements to be made to the high rates of recidivism in the state, with 44.2 percent of people returning to prison within two years of release in 2019-20, and a target of 41 percent in 2020-21.
A recent Victorian Auditor-General report found that prisons are failing in their recidivism goals due to government policy which is seeing an increase in the number of short sentences.
The report found that an increase in short stay sentenced prisoners at the privately-run Ravenhall Correctional Centre “significantly compromised” its ability to achieve rehabilitation goals.
Denham Sadler is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne. He covers politics and technology regularly for InnovationAus, and writes about other issues, including criminal justice, for publications including The Guardian and The Saturday Paper. He is also the senior editor of The Justice Map, a project to strengthen advocacy for criminal justice reform in Australia. You can follow him on Twitter.
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