Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

• Summary
• Downloads
• Explanatory Notes
• Related Information
• Past & Future Releases

PRISONERS

The National Prisoner Census, conducted annually on the night of 30 June, counts all people 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 people serving short sentences for less serious offences.

The total prison population on 30 June 2004 was 24,171 (table 11.39). New South Wales had the highest proportion of prisoners (39%), followed by Queensland (22%).

11.39 PRISONERS, By states and territories - 30 June 2004
		NSW(a)	Vic.	Qld	SA	WA	Tas.	NT	ACT in ACT	ACT in NSW(a)	ACT Total	Aust.(b)
NUMBER
All prisoners		9,329	3,624	5,240	1,485	3,169	447	717	160	118	278	24,171
	Males	8,671	3,380	4,881	1,393	2,900	425	701	148	111	259	22,499
	Females	658	244	359	92	269	22	16	12	7	19	1,672
	Indigenous	1,576	186	1,195	249	1,217	59	556	10	16	26	5,048
	Non-Indigenous	7,629	3,438	3,989	1,069	1,952	388	161	150	102	252	18,776
	Unknown	124	-	56	167	-	-	-	-	-	-	347
	Sentenced	7,458	3,010	4,079	970	2,668	379	587	85	118	203	19,236
	Unsentenced	1,871	614	1,161	515	501	68	130	75	-	75	4,935
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	92.9	93.3	93.1	93.8	91.5	95.1	97.8	92.5	94.1	93.2	93.1
	Females	7.1	6.7	6.9	6.2	8.5	4.9	2.2	7.5	5.9	6.8	6.9
	Indigenous	16.9	5.1	22.8	16.8	38.4	13.2	77.5	6.3	13.6	9.4	20.9
	Non-Indigenous	81.8	94.9	76.1	72.0	61.6	86.6	22.5	93.8	86.4	90.6	77.7
	Unknown	1.3	-	1.1	11.2	-	-	-	-	-	-	1.4
	Sentenced	79.9	83.1	77.8	65.3	84.2	84.8	81.9	53.1	100.0	73.0	79.6
	Unsentenced	20.1	16.9	22.2	34.7	15.8	15.2	18.1	46.9	-	27.0	20.4
(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, 2004 (4517.0).

There were 22,499 male prisoners at 30 June 2004, comprising 93% of the total prisoner population (table 11.40). The median age of prisoners was 32 years for both males and females. The majority (53% or 12,783) of prisoners were young adult males aged 20-34 years (graph 11.40).