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Australia: South Australia home detention instead of jail saves $200m
Sentencing offenders to home detention rather than putting them in prison has saved South Australian taxpayers more than $200 million over six years, a government-commissioned study has found.
The study by the Social Policy Centre, University of New South Wales, Griffith University and Epoque Consulting found the state government saved $148.7 million between 2016 and 2022 by diverting offenders out of prison and into supervised home detention.
Researchers found the government saved an estimated additional $51.5 million through reduced reoffending rates from sentencing offenders to home detention, resulting in total savings of $200.3 million.
“This equates to… cost savings of $43,603 per detainee through direct HD (home detention) prison time avoided and $54,887 when including subsequent reduced returns to custody,” the researchers stated in a report handed down last month and released publicly today.
According to the report, under 25 per cent of offenders who received a court-ordered home detention sentence returned to custody within two years, while 21 per cent of offenders who were released on home detention after serving part of their sentence in prison returned to custody.