Defined Terms

Capital Expenditure Cost Of Building New or Modify/Extending Existing Prisons

The below extract from $700m maximum security prison planned for Lara, Victoria - The Age (24 Apr 2018) evidences that the capital expenditure cost of providing maximum security prisons is at least $25,000 per inmate per annum based on $1 million dollars per prisoner to build the planned new Lara Prison divide by a 40 years life of the prison, before a major refit:

"A new maximum security men’s prison with 700 beds will be built in Lara, at a cost of almost $700 million, as Victoria’s prison population grows to record levels.
The Andrews government will commit $689.5 million in next week’s state budget – almost $1 million per prisoner – to build the jail, which it says will open in 2022."

Spreading a $690m capital outlay over 40 years is being optimistic, as doubtless, alterations and additions at the planned new Lara Barwon Prison will be required well prior to 40 years.

To the SuperMax - The Australian - "A special unit in this prison houses Australia’s most dangerous extremists. We gain rare access and discover a ticking time bomb."

Below is an extract from 'Supermax prison' - Wiki

"Supermax prisons however are extremely expensive to run and can cost about three times the national average for a maximum security facility.

However, many states now have created SuperMax prisons, either as stand-alone facilities or as secure units within lower-security prisons. State SuperMax prisons include Pelican Bay in California and Tamms in Illinois. The USP in Marion, Illinois was recently downgraded to a medium-security facility. Some facilities such as California State Prison, Corcoran (COR) are hybrids incorporating a SuperMax partition, housing high security prisoners such as Charles Manson.

In September 2001, the Australian state of New South Wales opened a facility in the Goulburn Correctional Centre to the SuperMax standard. While its condition is an improvement over that of Katingal of the 1970s, this new facility is nonetheless designed on the same principle of sensory deprivation. It has been set up for 'AA' prisoners who are deemed a risk to public safety and the instruments of government and civil order, or believed to be beyond rehabilitation. Corrections Victoria in the state of Victoria also operates the Acacia and Maleuca units at Barwon Prison which serve to hold the prisoners requiring the highest security in that state including Melbourne Gangland figures such as Tony Mokbel and Carl Williams, who was murdered in the Acacia unit in 2010."

• 8     Corrective services - annual report 2017 - Productivity Commission defines Capital Costs to be:

"Combined depreciation costs, the user cost of capital (calculated as 8 per cent of the value of government land and other assets), and debt servicing fees – financial lease payments incurred by governments as part of contracts for privately owned prisons or prisons built under Public‑Private Partnership arrangements, comparable to the user cost of capital for government owned facilities."

See:  Annual Administrative Cost of Australian Prisons

             Material Public Purse Prison and Prisoner Costs