The real cost of more prisons

According to the government's "Major Projects" webpage, the new prisons to be built in South Australia will cost $438 million!! The prison capacity, according to that website, will increase by about 500.

The ABS puts the annual cost of keeping a prisoner at $58,000, or a massive $29 million every year to house 500 extra prisoners.

Since there appears to be no plan to increase the size of the remand centre, we also need to factor in the cost of transporting all the remand prisoners from Murray Bridge to the city for Court appearances.

If Victoria can have the lowest crime rate in Australia, and an imprisonment rate of less than three quarters that in SA, what does our Government propose to do to reduce crime?