Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

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The National Prisoner Census, conducted annually on the night of 30 June, counts all persons who are in the legal custody of adult corrective services, including periodic detainees in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. At any given point in time, most prisoners are serving long sentences for relatively serious offences, but the flow of offenders in and out of prisons consists primarily of persons serving short sentences for less serious offences.

The total prison population on 30 June 2003 was 23,555. New South Wales had the highest proportion of prisoners (38%), followed by Queensland (22%).

11.29 PRISONERS, By states and territories - 30 June 2003
		NSW(a)	Vic.	Qld	SA	WA	Tas.	NT	ACT in ACT	ACT in NSW(a)	ACT total	Aust.(b)
NUMBER
All prisoners		8,881	3,763	5,243	1,455	2,899	453	729	132	117	249	23,555
	Males	8,289	3,482	4,895	1,352	2,681	429	707	126	111	237	21,961
	Females	592	281	348	103	218	24	22	6	6	12	1,594
	Indigenous	1,563	174	1,210	244	1,107	53	571	4	12	16	4,818
	Non-Indigenous	7,099	3,589	4,033	1,049	1,882	400	158	128	105	233	18,356
	Unknown	219	-	-	162	-	-	-	-	-	-	381
	Sentenced	7,044	3,068	4,153	983	2,447	355	612	76	117	193	18,738
	Unsentenced	1,837	695	1,090	472	452	98	117	56	-	56	4,817
PROPORTION (%)
All prisoners		100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
	Males	93.3	92.5	93.4	92.9	92.5	94.7	97.0	95.5	94.9	95.2	93.2
	Females	6.7	7.5	6.6	7.1	7.5	5.3	3.0	4.5	5.1	4.8	6.8
	Indigenous	17.6	4.6	23.1	16.8	35.1	11.7	78.3	3.0	10.3	6.4	20.5
	Non-Indigenous	79.6	95.4	76.9	72.1	64.9	88.3	21.7	97.0	89.7	93.6	77.9
	Unknown	2.5	-	-	11.1	-	-	-	-	-	-	1.6
	Sentenced	79.3	81.5	79.2	67.6	84.4	78.4	84.0	57.6	100.0	77.5	79.5
	Unsentenced	20.7	18.5	20.8	32.4	15.6	21.6	16.0	42.4	-	22.5	20.5
(a) The majority of full-time prisoners sentenced in the ACT are held in NSW prisons. (b) The ACT in NSW figures are a subset of the NSW figures, and are not separately counted in the Australian totals. Source: Prisoners in Australia, 2003 (4517.0).

There were 21,961 male prisoners at 30 June 2003, comprising 93% of the total prisoner population (table 11.29). The median age of prisoners was 32 years for males and 31 years for females. The majority of prisoners were young adult males, with 55% (12,841) of all prisoners being males aged 20-34 years (graph 11.30).