MEDIA RELEASE: Just Reinvest NSW report finds Aboriginal overrepresentation in the criminal justice system costs New South Wales at least $718 million

 24/09/2026 REDFERN, Sydney:The Aboriginal peak body for justice reinvestment, Just Reinvest NSW (JRNSW), today released a new report titled, ‘Held at a Cost: the cost to government of Aboriginal overrepresentation in the NSW criminal justice system, 2020-21 and 2024-25’. The report finds that Aboriginal overrepresentation in the state’s prisons, community corrections and courts cost at least $718 million in 2024–25, an increase of 41.7 percent over five years.

“The overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in the justice system has become normalised and remains unacceptable.  This report quantifies what the actual cost of overrepresentation is.  We can do better, and we must do better,” said Geoff Scott, CEO Just Reinvest NSW.

“We asked the question: if Aboriginal people came into contact with the criminal justice system at the same rate as their share of the population, how much less would that cost be? By analysing Report on Government Services (ROGS) data, we found that overrepresentation has a large price tag,” said Mr. Scott.

The report estimated this cost from NSW Government expenditure on prisons, community corrections and courts in 2024–25, measured against what expenditure would have been if Aboriginal people were represented in the system at the same rate as in the general population.

“The financial cost is a measure of the scale of resources spent on a pattern that governments have committed to ending. Under the Closing the Gap agreements, all Australian governments have committed to reducing rates of Aboriginal overrepresentation among adults and young people in prison,” said Mr. Scott.

Key Findings

• The cost of Aboriginal overrepresentation in the NSW criminal justice system was $718 million in 2024–25, an increase of 41.7 percent over the five financial years from 2020–21 to 2024–25.
• Of this total, $559 million related to adults and $159 million to young people aged 10 to 17.
• Prisons account for 77.1 percent of the total cost of overrepresentation, community corrections for 16.7 percent, and courts for 6.2 percent.
• Unsentenced prisoners were 45.8 percent of the total adult custody population in 2025–26, and 77.8 percent of the youth custody population.
• In 2024–25, detaining a young person cost around 8.1 times as much per day as imprisoning an adult.
• Since 2012-13, imprisonment of Aboriginal adults has increased by 91 percent compared to 18 percent for non-Aboriginal adults over the same period.
• Aboriginal young people aged 10 to 17 were held in detention at 16.5 times the rate of non-Aboriginal young people, accounting for the size of each population.

You can download the full report here

For more information contact James Nichols, JRNSW, M: 0499 686 157, E: james@justreinvest.org.au

Just Reinvest NSW supports Aboriginal communities to explore and establish justice reinvestment initiatives, and advocates for systemic change to build safer, stronger communities. The aim of Just Reinvest NSW is to reduce Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s contact with the New South Wales criminal justice system through justice reinvestment.

The report is published in the JR Data Hub which is a designated resource centre for community backbone teams implementing justice reinvestment. An initiative of Just Reinvest NSW, the hub is a free service that acts as a central repository for justice reinvestment specific data resources, and infrastructure required to support Indigenous Data Sovereignty, working together for impact evaluation at scale, and economic modelling for reinvestment and long-term systems change.