State Pays $65,000 A Year For Each Inmate
The Age
Friday November 26, 2004
VICTORIAN taxpayers are paying more than $65,000 a year to keep each prison inmate behind bars, and the State Opposition suggests that the average cost of prisoners has risen by more than a third in the past four years.
Victorians were paying an average of almost $48,000 a year for every prisoner in 2000-01. Today the average cost is $65,591, according to a budget estimates report tabled in Parliament. Opposition corrections spokesman Richard Dalla-Riva said the cost of keeping people in prison amounted to a blow-out of 37.6 per cent, higher than the inflation rate over the same period. But a Government spokeswoman said the average increase in recurrent costs for prisoners had risen by only 11 per cent over the past five years. -- Farrah Tomazin
© 2004 The Age