Victorian taxpayers to thank Baillieu for his very expensive, crime-increasing prison strategy

Anyone who supports sending more people to prison unnecessarily even where it will increase offending (what idiots call “getting tough on crime”) might want to let the rest of us know which hospitals or schools they’d like to close to pay for it:

VICTORIANS face a multibillion-dollar bill for a ”critical” prison expansion program that was confidentially hatched under the former Brumby government and is set to get even bigger and more urgent because of the Baillieu government’s tough-on-crime policies…

The cost of building, operating and maintaining such a prison over a typical 25-year term of a PPP project would be in excess of $2 billion. This figure does not include guards and other operating costs.

The shills in the Liberal Party who won government with talk of “zero tolerance” knew it was going to be expensive:

But Corrections Minister Andrew McIntosh does acknowledge that the platform – which also includes 100 armed train guards at stations, mandatory sentences for serious violence, and baseline sentencing – will lead to more prisoners. ”Of course that [Coalition policy] meant there was clearly going to be an increase in the number of prison beds that we would have to provide,” he told The Age recently.

But these brilliant “economic managers” won’t release any figures on how much they project the numbers to rise by, or the cost. Either they were to incompetent to actually determine the consequences of their asinine policies before implementing them – or they have the figures, and they’re political dynamite:

But neither the minister nor the Justice Department will release projections for prisoner numbers under those policies, despite acknowledging their existence.

And a quick reminder – none of this will be effective in reducing crime. It’s much more likely to increase reoffending:

Mr de Kretser said conservative governments around the world were rejecting the ”lock them up” policies being pursued by the Baillieu government. ”Studies suggest that very substantial increases in prison numbers produce only a modest reduction in crime. Worse, there is evidence that prison actually increases the chances of people re-offending after release,” he said.

Vast expense, more lives ruined, more crime for the rest of us.

Why would anyone support this utter madness?