Budget 2024 and 2025

Print

Major Budget decisions are subject to additional reporting requirements under Cabinet Minute ECO-24-MIN-0231. Corrections has one major budget decision that requires a report for Budget 2025, and two major budget decisions that require a progress report for Budget 2024 as at 30 June 2025.

Prisoner Population*

*The title combines the Budget 2024 initiative, 'Prisoner Population – Responding to Increasing Prisoner Numbers', and the Budget 2025 initiative, 'Corrections Prisoner Population and Other Volume Pressures'.

To manage a growing prisoner population, Corrections received $803.2 million over five years through Budget 2024, followed by an additional $492.2 million over five years in Budget 2025. These initiatives reflect the Government’s commitment to maintaining public safety while responding to increasing demand across the prison network.

The initiatives address increased costs to manage the growth in the prisoner population including additional frontline workforce to ensure staffing levels align with the capacity and service requirements of the prison system. A significant portion of the funding is allocated to increasing the number of corrections officers, which is why this workforce measure has been selected as a key indicator of progress, alongside actual prisoner population levels compared to funded growth.

This funding is critical to ensuring the prison network continues to operate safely, securely, and humanely. Performance will also be assessed against the expectations outlined in the Estimates of Appropriations, under the 'Public Safety is Improved' multi-category appropriation.

Our progress as at 31 December 2025

  • At 31 December 2025 Corrections was managing 10,873 prisoners. The actual prison population at 31 December is higher than the Budget 2025 planning assumption of 10,860 by 30 June 2026 (Budget 24 planning assumption of 10,000 by 30 June 2025).
  • The total actual corrections officer Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) increased to 4,680  (June 2025: 4,605 FTE).  Corrections continues to recruit custodial staff to support an increasing prison population.
  • To manage prison population above funded levels, Corrections has made internal reprioritisation decisions and is absorbing additional operating costs within existing baselines.

Rehabilitation Programmes – Extending to Remand Prisoners

We have been focused on ensuring planning for and beginning the implementation of the roll out of targeted and effective rehabilitation and reintegration for those on remand, as enabled by changes to the Corrections Act 2004. This will include enabling remand convicted prisoners to commence their offence focused rehabilitation, where appropriate. Corrections received $60 million total operating funding over five years through Budget 2024 to support this work

Our Progress as at 31 December 2025

The review of all rehabilitation programmes was completed, and a high-level plan for providing consistent and effective programmes and services to remand prisoners has been developed and approved by the Executive Leadership Team prior to the drawdown of the tagged contingency funding.

Implementation at some sites began in the first quarter of the 2026 financial year. More detailed site-specific planning is on-going to enable further roll out of services to remand populations.

The success of this initiative will be monitored by tracking the:

  • number of FTE recruited to deliver or enable delivery of rehabilitative services in remand
  • number of new contracts and/or contract variations signed to enable increased delivery of contracted services in remand
  • number of offence-focused rehabilitation programme starts by remand convicted prisoners
  • number of additional non-offence-focused programme starts by remand prisoners.