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Judges Giving Longer Prison Sentences

22 Jun 2007

 A research paper being released today by the Sentencing Advisory Council suggests that longer prison sentences are a key factor contributing to the increase in Victoria’s prisoner population.

A decade ago, Victoria’s prison population stood at around 2,500 prisoners. Between 2001 and 2006, the period of this study, Victoria’s prisoner population increased by 15.2%. Ninety-four percent of the 3,905 prisoners on 30 June 2006 were male, a 16% increase on the 2001 male prisoner population. Over the same period the female population of prisoners remained relatively stable with 245 women in Victorian prisons on 30 June 2006.

Sentencing Advisory Council Chair, Professor Arie Freiberg said, “We undertook this research in order to identify the factors that have most influenced this rise in prisoner numbers. This same trend is evident in most other Australian jurisdictions, in the United States and in the United Kingdom.”

“It is commonly, but incorrectly, assumed that prisoner numbers are up because crime is increasing. But we actually found the reverse of this—over the same period the overall crime rate in Victoria dropped by 21.9%.”

“We also looked at whether the Courts were sentencing more people to prison. But we found that of all the defendants proven guilty by Courts, the proportion of these that received a custodial sentence decreased slightly.”

“However, when Courts did impose a custodial sentence, we found that the average imprisonment length increased by 18.7% overall. This increase was most noticeable in sentences handed down in the County and Supreme Courts. Between 2000/01 and 2005/06 the average length of imprisonment increased by 12.4% to 54.3 months.”

“What all of this shows,” said Professor Freiberg, “is that Judges are sending about the same proportion of guilty defendants to prison, but those that are receiving prison sentences are staying in for longer. Based on our current research this seems to be the factor that is driving the increase in prisoner numbers.”

The Sentencing Advisory Council is the first body to do research on the factors influencing Victorian prisoner numbers for this period of time. One of the key roles of the Council is to conduct research on sentencing in Victoria. This paper is one of a number of statistical reports about sentencing trends available from the Sentencing Advisory Council.

Victoria’s Prison Population: 2001 to 2006 is available on this website.