Australia's 'irrational' spending on prisons unsustainable

Australia spends $2.6 billion a year jailing adults and imprisonment rates are rising at an unsustainable rate, says Queensland University of Technology's head of the School of Justice, Professor Kerry Carrington.Professor Carrington said state politicians overlooked the billions of wasted dollars poured into the prison system with no return other than better trained criminals because they had to look tough on crime.She said it was cheaper to prevent offending than it was to lock offenders up."Australia is imprisoning more people than ever even though crime rates have been going down for years. The rate of imprisonment in Australia rose by 17 per cent in one year between December 2008 and December 2009," she sa...