Jailing children fails on every measure. So why do we persist?

While there are long-term savings to be had, a change of tack would require governments to make large upfront investments into prevention and early support and intervention initiatives. The long-term savings can then be (re)invested into new or continued prevention and early intervention initiatives.

The Productivity Commission did some work on this in 2021, releasing a report on “Australia’s prison dilemma” and highlighting alternative approaches to prison that could achieve better outcomes at lower costs, such as diversion programs, restorative justice and home detention.

But the missing part of this equation to date has been the political courage to say that locking people up isn’t always the smartest approach. Getting politicians to do what makes economic or moral sense is often challenging amid rising populism and media cycles driven by clickbait algorithms.

Continuing to throw billions at a system that drives further offending is poor policy and fiscal negligence. At a time when governments are stretched and debt is growing, a reassessment of our costly overreliance on prisons and the relative lack of investment in evidence-based alternatives to incarceration would prove valuable. We will see far greater returns from investing upfront where the dividend is highest: keeping people out of prison in the first place.

Saul Eslake is an independent economist and an inaugural member of Economists for Justice Reform, established by the Justice Reform Initiative.

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