Mandatory sentencing for alcohol violence could overcrowd prisons
NSW prisons are close to capacity, and lack the 5 per cent ''ideal buffer'' that the prisons chief has said is needed to avoid ''hot bedding'' and increased assaults.
As the NSW government prepares to pass laws for nine mandatory prison sentences for violent offences involving alcohol, expected to swell prison numbers, a report has revealed prison use has reached 96.6 per cent, after an unexpected increase in prisoners last year.
When Treasurer Mike Baird shut down three prisons in 2011 to save money, the utilisation rate was 89.8 per cent.
One of those prisons, in Berrima, is being prepared for sale to the tourism market. The Kirkconnell prison is the most likely to be reopened, should demand require it, after being ''mothballed'' in 2011.
The latest Productivity Commission report shows NSW slashed prison spending by almost $100 million last year, and cut spending on criminal courts by $27 million.
The prison population reached a high of 10,071 in the year ending June 30, 2013. More recent Bureau of Crime Statistics data show prisoner numbers have continued to climb, reaching 10,152 last December. NSW prisons have a design capacity of 10,154.
Corrective Services commissioner Peter Severin told a parliamentary inquiry in 2012 that spare capacity of 5 per cent was required as a buffer for the ''effective management of the inmate population'' and high utilisation rates had an adverse effect on assaults.
Prisons need spare capacity for transfers, segregation, protection, and health units, and to ''avoid the need for hot-bedding'', he said.
Adjunct professor with Sydney University's law school, Chris Cunneen, ran the Australian Prisons Project and published a book on its findings last year.
He said if the nine new mandatory sentences removed judicial discretion, as had occurred in the Northern Territory, this would have ''a direct impact on people going to prison''.
Northern Territory prisons are at 119 per cent capacity.
Mr Cunneen said mandatory sentencing in the US led to ''massive increases in the prison population'' but governments were starting to shift away from it to cut costs.
''It had a tremendous effect, with billion-dollar budgets being spent on corrective services, which are now under scrutiny after the global financial crisis,'' he said.
The NSW Attorney-General's Department will seek increased funding in the budget to cover the impact of the alcohol violence reforms, but no estimate has yet been made of how large the funding boost will need to be.
''Should it become apparent that additional costs will be incurred, this will be considered as part of the budget process,'' a spokeswoman for Attorney-General Greg Smith said.
NSW spends the least of any state per person on criminal courts, after cutting 22 judicial officers last year.
Magistrate positions were the worst hit, with 19 jobs lost, or 17 per cent of positions.
NSW spent $677 million on prisons in 2012-13, compared to $857 million in 2008.
Victoria, which last year introduced a mandatory sentence for gross violence, has budgeted for a 50 per cent increase in prison capacity in the next four years.
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