The Territory is jailing more people than ever -- and it is making us less safe
Jesuit Social Services
Key Facts:When the Country Liberal Party took office in August 2024, around 2,230 people were behind bars in the Northern Territory. By the end of that year the figure had passed 2,598.
Today it sits at more than 2,800 — a record and still climbing. The Territory now imprisons its people at the second-highest rate on earth, behind only El Salvador.
More than one in every hundred Territorians are in custody. Close to nine in ten of them are Aboriginal.
By John Adams, General Manager, Jesuit Social Services NT
When the Country Liberal Party took office in August 2024, around 2,230 people were behind bars in the Northern Territory. By the end of that year the figure had passed 2,598. Today it sits at more than 2,800 — a record and still climbing. The Territory now imprisons its people at the second-highest rate on earth, behind only El Salvador. More than one in every hundred Territorians are in custody. Close to nine in ten of them are Aboriginal.
We are told that this failing approach is to protect the ‘territory lifestyle’, but what sometimes gets forgotten is that an essential part of what makes this place great is mutual respect and a willingness to look after one another when times are tough. That respect might be as simple as tolerating your neighbour's love of cracker night despite it driving your dogs mad; or go to something deeper, like acknowledging that people have been on this land for thousands of years. We saw our communities at their best during the recent floods as we pulled together to lend each other a hand. The cost of locking up young people is not just measured in dollars – how do you tally the years of wasted potential? The emotional burden of empty chairs at the family dinner table? It drains our collective good will and hurts us all.
These are not abstractions. Behind each number is a person — and, increasingly, a person who has not been convicted of anything. Across the system, more than half of those in custody are on remand, still waiting for their day in court. Among children, the picture is starker still: at June’s estimates hearings, the Corrections Department confirmed that a clear majority of young people in detention were on remand. We are locking up children before they have been found guilty. Lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10 has swept primary-school-aged children into that net.
We were told this would make the Territory safer. The evidence says otherwise. At those same hearings, the Corrections Commissioner was asked a simple question: can you point to a single new program proven to be reducing reoffending? His answer, to his credit, was honest — no. The recidivism rate remains stubbornly high, with just under 60 per cent of those released returning to prison within two years. The department could not even produce reliable data on whether the children it releases return, because the systems meant to track them do not talk to one another.
This is not to diminish the importance of these programs, nor a criticism of the Corrections Commissioner – no-one wants to see people who’ve been released from the justice system return. It’s just a simple fact that prisons and police are just a small part of the puzzle and without trying to address the abject poverty and systemic failures that drive offending, nothing will change.
This is the heart of the problem. Many of these kids have undiagnosed neurodevelopmental disability or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. Many have had limited schooling and carry untreated trauma. Prison fixes none of this. While enormous sums are being spent on corrections, spending on mental health and family violence fell in the last NT Budget. We lock children up, remove them from their families, expose them to further trauma and wonder why things don’t improve when they’re released.
There is a bitter irony here. In 2024, before the election, the now-Minister for Corrections himself said that “jailing was failing.” On that point, he was right. Decades of evidence — from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody to the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory — tell the same story. Incarceration entrenches disadvantage across generations. It does not resolve it.
What works is well known, and much of it has been led by Aboriginal communities themselves. Diversion keeps children out of the system and reduces reoffending at a fraction of the cost of a cell. Community-led, on-country programs — many of them chronically underfunded or forced to close — rehabilitate young people in ways a razor-wire compound never will. Stable housing, education and genuine support on release do more for community safety than another thousand beds ever could.
At Jesuit Social Services we begin from a simple conviction: every person has inherent dignity, and a just society is measured by how it treats those it finds easiest to lock away. The Territory has chosen a path that is more expensive, less effective, and more harmful than the alternatives sitting in front of it. It is not too late to change course. But it will take the courage to invest in people, not prisons.
Contact details:
Media enquiries: Toby Halligan, 0455 452 765 or [email protected]
