In 2016, the NSW government announced that it would spend $3.8 billion building new prisons. The corrections minister, David Elliott, said:

This is, it must be said, not money the state government is happy to spend … My personal preference would always be that this money, this NSW taxpayers’ money, is spent on schools and hospitals.

But governments do have a choice in how they allocate the public’s money. And the evidence supporting justice reinvestment is strong and growing.

In September 2018, the Queensland government asked the Queensland Productivity Commission to undertake an inquiry into imprisonment and reoffending. In its draft report, the commission described imprisonment as a “growing policy problem” and stated that “increasing imprisonment can make the community less safe”. It also recognised that imprisonment “is costly, and this cost is borne by the community”.

It remains to be seen what the commission recommends, but all Australian governments should have the courage to follow the ACT’s lead and invest in communities, not razor wire.