The overcrowded prisons in the Northern Territory have gotten worse, with the latest numbers revealing an unprecedented 2468 people are behind bars in the NT.
The numbers are an increase of 234 since the new CLP government came to power in August and enacted a series of heavily criticised laws which experts argued would see further incarceration.
On Friday, the NT government trumpeted the numbers, which have already seen complaints from corrections officials.
In a statement titled "CLP Corrections fix rolls on as prisoner numbers surge since election", Corrections Minister Gerard Maley said the government was trying to get "criminals off the street" and "supporting police to get their watch houses back".
"Our government is backing police, ensuring criminals face consequences, and successfully rolling out the first tranche of the Corrections infrastructure plan to manage the increased prisoner numbers," he said.
The government has argued their 'tough on crime' electoral mandate required them to legislate lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10, as well as bringing back spit hoods in youth detention and enacting "Declan's Law", whereby offenders categorised as violent are automatically remanded to jail with a presumption against bail.
It has been slammed by experts as a "disaster waiting to happen".
"The new Chief Minister has been elected on a platform to reduce crime but her punitive agenda will do the exact opposite," NATSILS' chair Karly Warner said in September.
"Law and order posturing about punishment, power and control has never worked before and it won't work now."
On lowering the age, she added: "The NT already has by far the highest imprisonment rates in Australia – if jailing children worked, this would already be the safest place in the country."
Currently, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people aged 14-17 are incarcerated at a higher rate in the NT than anywhere else in the country, whilst the latest Closing the Gap data saw eight metrics failing to improve - the worst jurisdiction in the country.
On an average day in 2022-23, Indigenous children and young people were 42.9 times more likely to be in youth detention in the NT compared to non-Indigenous children and young people.
The average daily imprisonment rate for the September quarter in the NT was 1,157 per 100,000 adults, more than five times the national average.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults, an incarceration rate of 3585.7 per 100,000 is the second highest in the country behind only Western Australia.
Criticising Labor, who the government said oversaw a rise of 617 in prison numbers, Minister Maley said his government was "ending the excuses and making the tough decisions necessary to fix the Corrections crisis".
"For eight years, Labor ignored the growing problem, doing nothing as our prisons became overcrowded and overflowed into police watch houses," he said.
"We recognise the growing prisoner numbers are adding pressure to the Corrections system, but we make no apologies for taking every necessary step to ensure the safety of Territorians. Community safety is our top priority."
Experts have long argued harsher laws won't make the community safer in the long term, and it remains unclear how the prison capacity increase will cope if the rate of incarcerations continue.
In October, the government announced an increase in prison capacity across the NT to 3000 beds by 2028, with data currently only 2177 beds across the prisons and work camps.
At the time, Justice Reform Initiative executive director Dr Mindy Sotiri said: "This is short-term, knee-jerk policy making. We urge the NT Government to shift its focus to reducing the numbers of people flowing into the criminal justice system, instead of rushing to expensive band-aid solutions which will not ultimately address the problems."
