APPENDIX A
4.1 Direct Costs Direct costs relate to the operational costs associated with running a prison. According to a Corrective Services report on government services,83 the total cost per prisoner (comprising net operating expenditure, depreciation, debt servicing fees and user cost of capital) was $275 per day, or $100,400 per year. This 2009–10 cost was inflated to December 2014 using CPI inflation72 to arrive at a sum of $113,333. The health costs of caring for prisoners with mental disorders have not been included in the current study due to the lack of available data. Using ABS data,82 the average prison duration was then calculated by taking the weighted average by type of crime using the mix of prisoners by age and by sentence type, and the average expected time to serve. It was assumed that the length of prison sentences received by the cohort with mental disorders is the same as the general population. The resulting average duration of imprisonment for all ages was greater than 1 year, but the direct cost of imprisonment was capped at 1 year for the model (as the intention is to calculate yearly costs).r
Imprisonment Cost Category (Direct Costs): Model Result Table 31 Imprisonment direct costs – males Age range
Marginal number imprisoned (‘000)
<18
0.07
7.9
18
0.11
12.7
Direct imprisonment cost ($m)
19
0.20
22.7
20–25
1.64
186.1
Total
2.02
229.5
Table 32 Imprisonment direct costs – females
r
Age range
Marginal number imprisoned (‘000)
Direct imprisonment cost ($m)
<18
0.00
0.0
18
0.01
0.9
19
0.01
1.3
20–25
0.14
15.4
Total
0.15
17.5
The average duration of imprisonment is greater than 1 year for all age groups.
40 | A Way Forward