The latest prisoner numbers raise several important questions, as Alan Austin reports.
IF CRIME IS SURGING across the nation, we would naturally expect prison populations to increase accordingly. This is not happening in Australia.
Crime rates tumbled during the COVID pandemic. Citizens under lockdowns were not permitted to have coffee or dine or walk in the park with other people as often as before. Turns out they couldn’t assault or kill one another as often as they used to, either.
Since then, crime rates have not returned to the high pre-COVID levels. Yet prisoner numbers keep rising.
The grim reality
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, prisons held 46,998 adults at 30 June 2025. That was 2,595 more than in June 2024, representing a 5.8% increase and the highest number ever, although not the highest rate per population.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners now number 17,432, up by 1,561 on 2024, a rise of 9.8%. See chart below.
Prisoner numbers increased in 2024 in every state and territory except Victoria. Numbers increased in 2025 everywhere except Tasmania.
The imprisonment rate is now 216.4 prisoners per 100,000 adult population, up from 208.2 in 2024 and just 200.9 in 2022, which was the lowest in decades. The highest was 221.5 in 2018.
The disparity in rates between the states is enormous, with Victoria by far the lowest at 118.2 prisoners per 100,000 residents. Western Australia is the highest with 357.1 per 100,000. The Northern Territory is vastly worse than any of the states, with an inexcusable 1,419.4 per 100,000.
Surge in the last two years
Disturbingly, the last two years have seen an increase of 5,069 prisoners, which is 12.1%.
As the graph reveals, Indigenous prison numbers increased by 3,580 in the last two years, an appalling 25.8%. Non-Indigenous numbers were up by just 1,346, or 4.8%.
In what may be a sign of greater gender equality, the rate of women incarcerated is now increasing after a long history of grossly disparate rates. Over the last two years, female prisoners surged by 20.9%, compared with 11.4% for males.
Higher imprisonment is not due to worsening criminality. The reduction in violent crime in Australia since the gun laws were reformed in 1996 and again in 2002 has been impressive.
Intentional homicides in 1995 were recorded by the World Bank at 19.7 per million residents. This tumbled to 12.1 in 2009 and just 8.5 in 2023.
The main reason is that justice departments and the courts have shifted from allowing unsentenced offenders to remain in the community to remanding them in custody.
Prisoners on remand have increased by 3,913 in the last two years, which is up 24.6%, in contrast to the 4.5% increase in sentenced prisoners.
Community is no safer
A disturbing study by Dr Emma Russell et al published last year by the University of NSW found that:
For the most part, governments imprison more Australians because of changes to criminal law and policy. These include making bail harder to access or increasing the length of prison sentences.
One estimate suggests 77% of the increase in imprisonment in Australia since 1985 can be accounted for by these two factors alone.
The UNSW study, titled ‘Prisons don’t create safer communities, so why is Australia spending billions on building them?’ proposes a remedy:
‘Governments could... pursue evidence-based alternatives to imprisonment, such as place-based initiatives that are led by First Nations communities. Instead, governments are leading massive new prison construction projects.’
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
This brings us to arguably the most shameful stain on Australia’s human rights record, which should be at the top of the issues requiring attention.
Indigenous Australians are just 3.8% of the population, but now represent 37.1% of the prison population. That’s up from 33.0% in 2023 and 27.6% in 2018.
The steepening graph of Indigenous imprisonment sharpens the condemnation of all politicians, media commentators and others who in 2023 campaigned against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
As IA argued passionately but pointlessly at the time, the First Nations National Constitutional Convention requested a modest reform. This offered the best chance in a generation to set up the framework within which Indigenous leaders could have dealt with the fundamental causes of dysfunction within Indigenous communities.
The treachery of the opportunists who destroyed the aspirations of those Indigenous leaders – including most (but not all) Coalition MPs in office in 2023 – must never be forgotten. The Coalition will not deserve participation in any national decision-making until they commit to heeding the voices of Australia’s underprivileged.
Reforms are achievable
The UNSW’s Russell study reported:
‘The hyper-incarceration of First Nations people reflects a long history of the use of imprisonment as a tool of colonial control. It results in more children being separated from their families, reduced access to housing, education and health care.’
The study shows that other nations, including the Netherlands, are finding decarceration is not only possible, but has broad economic and societal benefits, including reducing crime:
‘Instead of falsely positioning prisons as economic panaceas and buying into the myth that they create safety through punishment and exclusion, the evidence shows governments need to enact new policies and direct funding towards the infrastructure that strengthens communities and enhances security for all: housing, health care, education, healthy environments and sustainable employment opportunities.’
If the Netherlands can
depopulate their prisons, so can Western Australia.
Alan Austin is an Independent Australia columnist and freelance journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @alanaustin001.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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