Forecasts of Victoria’s recidivism rate have soared to 45% since parole restrictions were introduced and suspended sentences were abolished, a jump of more than 5% on last year’s figures and the biggest rise in any jurisdiction in Australia.
About 45% of prisoners released in Victoria will be locked up again within two years, it was forecast in Tuesday’s state budget, a 10% increase in recidivism compared with four years ago.
Liana Buchanan, the executive officer of the Federation of Community Legal Centres, said the increase was due to “four years of simplistic tough-on-crime policies” that had seen prisoner numbers swell to the highest in a decade.
“Overcrowded prisons means there’s less capacity for the things that assist rehabilitation,” she said. “And with parole being much harder to get in a very blanket way, people are being increasingly released [into the community] straight from prison.”
The increase in prisoner numbers has been partly attributed to parole restrictions implemented after a damning review by the retired high court judge Ian Callinan after the 2012 murder of Melbourne woman Jill Meagher.
The state ombudsman is investigating the impact of prison overcrowding on rehabilitation programs, amid reports that prisoners are unable to secure places in training and education programs that might see them released early.
The Napthine government, which lost office in November, also abolished suspended sentences to “restore truth to sentencing”.
Victoria’s new corrections minister, Wade Noonan, said the previous government had provided beds for the influx of new prisoners, without also increasing funding for healthcare and vocational training.
“They didn’t provide the sort of support to allow those prisoners to be rehabilitated such that they could transition successfully into the community,” he told Guardian Australia.
He said Labor had delivered a “rehabilitation budget” on Tuesday that included $13.5m to expand health and education facilities at Dhurringile, Beechworth and Langi Kal Kal prisons. Another $7.5m was allocated for an “industry centre” to provide job training and connect prisoners with employers.
The community corrections system – allowing minor offenders to serve their sentences in the community – was also bolstered with $88.9m and 147 new staff.
Noonan said he would resist pressure for “knee-jerk policies”. “If you’ve got crime increasing, you’ve got imprisonment rates increasing, and you’ve got crime rates increasing, you’ve got to ask yourself if that’s a sustainable footing,” he said.
“You simply cannot argue the community is safer. I think what the community expects from their politicians is less slogans, less chest-beating.”
Buchanan said Victoria had traditionally had a much lower recidivism rate than other states and territories, hovering around 40% in 2001-02, and gradually declining to a low of 35.1% in 2011.
“In just four years there’s been a 10% increase in the rate of reoffending,” she said. “It’s increasing faster than anywhere else in the country and is a major cause for concern.”
Productivity commission figures released in February, calculated differently from the Victorian government’s numbers, showed a similar surge in the state’s recidivism rate, rivalling that of New South Wales and the Northern Territory.
Overcrowding in Victorian prisons has heightened the risk of people being harmed, sexually assaulted and killed, a 2014 state ombudsman’s report says. A separate report found the system to transport prisoners was also stretched, resulting in hundreds of offenders having court dates cancelled.
The opposition corrections minister, Ed O’Donohue, said the forecast was “a pathetic attempt by a new minister to try to politicise and blame others for an issue instead of taking responsibility for it”.
