A crackdown on welfare fraud has seen the number of female inmates in Australia rise by two-thirds over the last decade.
Australia’s prison population is at its highest-ever recorded level, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
But some of the largest increases have come from women, rising to 3,310 female inmates – a record number of women in Australian prisons.
Although female prisoners account for just eight per cent of Australia’s prison population, 28.7 per cent of these women are serving time for fraud, the Adelaide Advertiser reported.
A crackdown on welfare fraud has seen the number of female inmates in Australia rise by two-thirds over the last decade. Female prisoners walking in the Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre in Queensland (stock image)
A recent government push to combat social-security fraud involved intensive covert surveillance on women.
This coincided with a report from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) which found women were twice as likely to be convicted of welfare fraud offences than men.
Over ten years Australia’s female prison population increased by 65 per cent. This is in comparison to a 50 per cent rise in the male prison population over the same period, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the AIC found.
There is a direct link between female convictions and the law enforcement of welfare payments, Professor Julie Stubbs, co-Director of the Centre for Crime, Law and Justice at the University of NSW said.
Over ten years Australia’s female prison population increased by 65 per cent. This is in comparison to a 50 per cent rise in the male prison population over the same period. The Sir David Longland Correctional Centre Maximum Security Unit (pictured)
‘Areas like fraud and drug crime are really shaped very much by police and prosecution discretion so if Centrelink has a crackdown, or the police in various locations have a crackdown around particular categories of crime, that detects more offences,’ said Professor Stubbs.
‘In the fraud domain, we see lots of evidence about Centrelink getting tougher on people who receive welfare and so when they change their policing and enforcement practices sometimes that generates extra cases that they wouldn’t have come up with before.
‘Crackdowns may also influence which cases are seen as fraud rather than simply an error in the over-payment of benefits.’
Although female prisoners account for just eight per cent of Australia’s prison population, 28.7 per cent of these women are serving time for fraud, Adelaide Now reported
Women tend to serve sentences for low level or petty crime, the reports found.
There is a direct link between female convictions and the law enforcement of welfare payments, Professor Julie Stubbs, co-Director of the Centre for Crime, Law and Justice at the University of NSW said
The most common offence committed by female prisoners was found to be illicit drug offences, accounting for 21 per cent of female prisoners.
This is in comparison to 14 per cent of illicit drug offences committed by male prisoners. In total, women made up 11.5 per cent of all prisoners with a drug offence.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were dramatically over-represented and were 21 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-indigenous women, the AIC report found.
As crackdowns on previously undetected crimes catch more low-level offenders, more women are being convicted for offences
‘Areas like fraud and drug crime are really shaped very much by police and prosecution discretion,’ Professor Julie Stubbs said
As crackdowns on previously undetected crimes catch more low-level offenders, more women are being convicted for offences.
‘So people who in the past might have been given a caution, or a diversion, or a non-custodial sentence, as a system gets tougher get brought into the harder end of the system into prison,’ social justice advocate and criminologist, Professor Eileen Baldry explained.
‘The profile of women in prison – on the whole – is that they come from very disadvantaged backgrounds and disadvantaged places.
‘Many of them have not finished school, by far the majority of them have children, and their children are at dependence age,’ she said.
Women tend to serve sentences for low level or petty crime, reports found
Approximately 60 per cent of women in prison are mothers or primary carers to children, while about 80 per cent of indigenous women in prison are mothers.
For these reasons incarceration may not necessarily be the solution and inter-generational consequences should be considered.
A prisoner costs the taxpayer close to $110,000 per prisoner each year, Adelaide Now reported.