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Number of people in Australia's prisons rises for fifth straight year

Xinhua, December 8, 2016 Adjust font size:

The number of Australians incarcerated in the nation's prisons has increased for the fifth straight year, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Thursday.

According to the ABS, 38,845 Australians were locked up in prisons on the night of June 30, 2016, 8 percent more than the corresponding night in 2015 and an increase of 10 percent and 7 percent on the two years before that.

But the ABS' Director of the National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics William Milne said the inflated numbers could be attributed to an ever-increasing rate of "unsentenced prisoners" -- or those who are held in custody while they are awaiting the outcome of their trial.

"While the numbers for both sentenced and unsentenced prisoners have continued to rise, the unsentenced population has grown at a faster rate," Milne said in a statement released on Thursday.

"Ten years ago, one in five prisoners was unsentenced, whereas now, the unsentenced population has grown to account for one third of all prisoners."

According to the statistics, more than half (55 percent) of those unsentenced prisoners had committed one of three offences.

Of those, 29 percent had intended to cause injury to others, while those who committed illicit drug offences made up 15 percent of unsentenced prisoners, while those who unlawfully entered a property with intent made up 11 percent. Endit