By Karen Fredericks
BRISBANE — The Peter Beattie Labor state government on September 15 announced a budget which funds the biggest ever expansion of prisons in Australia's history. The budget allocation for corrective services capital expansion is greater than that for education.
The jail budget blowout is the result of a massive growth in the prison population. Queensland has the fastest growing incarceration rate in the western world.
Between August 1997 and April the state's prison population grew by an average of 80 prisoners per month. The incarceration rate has grown from less than 120 per 100,000 to 175 per 100,000. Prisoner numbers have more than doubled and indigenous prisoner numbers have nearly trebled, from less than 350 in 1993 to more than 1000.
In 1993, indigenous men were around 17% of the adult male prison population. In 1998, it is 23%. Indigenous youth make up more than half the occupants of youth detention centres.
The 1998-99 budget allocated $178 million to fund an additional 1666 adult cells in the state, including a new 600-cell male "protection" prison and a 230-cell women's prison on the outskirts of Brisbane. The total corrective services budget is nearly $500 million.
There are currently 4600 prisoners in only 3200 cells. Some prisoners are sleeping on mattresses on the floor, next to shared toilets. Visiting areas have been made into makeshift accommodation.
Women at the Townsville Correctional Centre last year held a sit-in protest to demand bunks in doubled-up cells so they wouldn't have to sleep on the floor.