The need for a jail in the ACT had receded, the ACT Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, said yesterday.
He was commenting after the publication of the Australian Institute of Criminology annual national prison census.
The figures, on their face, showed a large increase in ACT prisoners on remand at the Belconnen Remand Centre. However, they were based on small samples and subject to wide monthly fluctuations.
Of more importance, Mr Connolly said, were underlying trends of low imprisonment rates. In these circumstances he had to question the economics of a full-range prison. One option was to continue to send maximum-security prisoners to NSW and have a low-security prison farm and remand centre in the ACT.
There were only about 20 ACT maximum-security prisoners in NSW. Private prison operators said a prison needed between 200-300 inmates to be economic.
The institute of criminology figures show a 243 per cent increase in prisoners at the Belconnen Remand Centre over the 10 years since the census began. The census embraces all prisoners in Australia. ACT figures include only the Belconnen Remand Centre as other ACT prisoners are taken to NSW and included there.
The ACT increase was the highest of any jurisdiction. The next highest was NSW with a 60 per cent increase. Only Tasmania fell over the 10 years.
NSW has gone up substantially since truth-in-sentencing has been in force in the past two years.
The figures show an increase from seven remandees in 1981-82 to 23 in 1990-91. However, figures issued by the ACT Corrections Review Committee paint another picture. They show wide monthly fluctuations in remandee figures between 12 and 30 since February, 1986.
Mr Connolly said the latest figures for total ACT prisoners (remand and NSW transportees) showed a downward trend after an increase in 1990 and 1991 because of NSW truth-in-sentencing provisions which had affected ACT prisoners sent to NSW.
In July, 1992, the ACT had 78 prisoners in NSW jails, down from 113 in 1990. There were only 16 prisoners on remand at the end of August this year, down from a high of 30 in September, 1990.
In the past couple of years there had been a steady rise in the number of community-service orders.
“”The ACT is using prison as a last resort,” he said.
The criminology figures showed that compared with other states and Northern Territory, the ACT had the lowest imprisonment rate in Australia by far.
The ACT has a rate of a little over 30 per 100,000 population, less than a third the national average. The figures show the rates of other states as: Northern Territory 394, Western Australia 152, NSW 129, Queensland 101, South Australia 87, Tasmania 71, Victoria 69.
Mr Connolly said that when the ACT imprisonment rate was going up the case for a full jail was gaining, now it was receding and its economics had to be questioned.