The state of justice reinvestment in Australia
A country spends $3,634 a day to hold one child in a cell. And $424 a day to keep that child home, on Country, with people around them.
Forty-two communities are already building the second number. This is the map of what they are making, where the money goes, and whether it holds up when you read the receipts.
One bed. Youth detention.
The national cost to detain a single young person for one day, 2024‑25. Around $1.30M a year, per child.
The same day. In community.
The national cost of community-based supervision for the same young person, the same day.
How to read this
One report, eight movements, drawn from 42 sites, 133 sourced figures, and the national justice ledger. It is a living page: the honest gaps close in public as the data is aligned. Every figure carries its source.
Record read as of 10 July 2026
The choice we keep making
This is not a question of whether reinvestment works. It is a question of what we choose to fund.
Every dollar in the ledger was already spent. The country can spend it on the cell, or on the street the child lives on. Right now it spends most of it on the cell, and First Nations kids fill most of the beds.
to detain one child, per year
of youth-justice spend goes to detention
youth detention facilities nationally
rows of cost data on file, 2007-2031
How we got here
The idea has a spine. It runs from a word to a national program in twenty years.
The idea is named
Susan Tucker and Eric Cadora coin justice reinvestment in the Open Society publication Ideas for an Open Society, proposing that money spent locking people up be redirected into the communities they come from.
US legislative life
The Justice Reinvestment Initiative takes hold across US states with support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Council of State Governments, embedding justice reinvestment in state criminal justice reform.
Australia takes up the idea
A Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry into the value of a justice reinvestment approach reports to the Australian Parliament, marking the formal arrival of justice reinvestment in national policy debate.
Maranguka begins in Bourke
The Bourke community and Just Reinvest NSW launch Maranguka, an Aboriginal community-led justice reinvestment site, widely regarded as Australia's first place-based justice reinvestment trial.
ALRC Pathways to Justice
The Australian Law Reform Commission's Pathways to Justice report recommends Commonwealth, state and territory governments support justice reinvestment to reduce Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander incarceration.
KPMG measures Maranguka
An independent KPMG impact assessment finds the Maranguka justice reinvestment model delivered a gross economic impact of $3.1 million in 2017, alongside falls in family violence and youth justice contact in Bourke.
Olabud Doogethu in Halls Creek
The Shire of Halls Creek establishes Olabud Doogethu, Western Australia's first justice reinvestment site, working across Halls Creek, Mulan, Kundat Djaru and Mindibungu.
Commonwealth commits to a national program
The Australian Government commits $69 million over four years to a National Justice Reinvestment Program supporting up to 30 community-led initiatives, the first sustained Commonwealth investment in the approach.
First priority sites named
The National Justice Reinvestment Program opens for applications, with Alice Springs and Halls Creek among the first priority sites where funding flows to community-led initiatives on the ground.
The national program scales out
Grant agreements under the National Justice Reinvestment Program reach communities across every mainland state and territory, with the Attorney-General's Department publishing a list of funded grantees and places.
Central Australia program announced
The Central Australia Justice Reinvestment Initiative is announced, including the CAYLUS-led Mampu-Maninjaku project across Nyirripi, Willowra and Yuendumu, alongside the Alice Springs early investment site.
National delivery organisation tender
With the Measurement and Evaluation Framework finalised and the Interim National Justice Reinvestment Unit operating, the Commonwealth releases a tender to select the organisation that will deliver the national program.
The map of the movement
42 places. 7 jurisdictions. Led by the communities themselves, not the state.
Maranguka in Bourke. Olabud Doogethu in Halls Creek. Tiraapendi Wodli in Adelaide’s north. Each one is a community deciding what safety looks like for its own kids, and building it. Tap any marker to open the site in full.
justice reinvestment sites
programs documented across 34 sites
named people leading the work
lead orgs are community-controlled
From the ground · Bourke, NSW
Before Maranguka, a child in Bourke could pass through eleven agencies and still fall through every one.
Bourke is a town of about two thousand people on Ngemba, Wangkumara and Barkindji Country. For years it sat near the top of the state’s crime lists and near the bottom of the spending that might change that. Then the community stopped waiting. Under Alistair Ferguson, the Bourke Tribal Council built Maranguka: one place where the school, the police, the courts and the families finally shared what they knew. Not a program delivered to a town. A structure the town owns.
gross impact in a single year (KPMG, 2018)
fewer reported family-violence incidents
every other dot holds a story shaped like this
The report lets you open any dot on the map and read it from the ground up: who leads it, what they built, what it cost, and what changed. Bourke is where the movement learned it could work. The other forty-one are where it is being tried.
What the work actually is
Behind the word “reinvestment” is a night patrol, a healing camp, an elder on Country, a kid who finishes school.
The sites do not yet share a common language for what they do. The alternatives map already does, across 1,722 programs. The report borrows that language so you can see the shape of the work, not just the dots on a map.
Community-Led
Wraparound support
Education / Employment
Cultural Connection
Diversion
Justice Reinvestment
Follow the money
The system already spends the money. The only question is where it lands.
The daily choice, drawn to scale
$3,210 more, every single day, for the outcome that works less often.
Of every $1,000 the justice system spends…
… about $3 is dedicated to justice reinvestment. The three lit squares are the whole movement’s dedicated share.
The ledger, and the sliver that reaches communities
Government $58.28B vs philanthropy $684.6M · the bars are to scale.
Where the $174.4M actually goes
Does it hold up?
We show our working. Every figure carries its source and its verdict.
Maranguka, Bourke: KPMG found $3.1 million in gross impact in a single year, and a 23% drop in reported family violence.
Source: KPMG 2018 impact assessment · class: outcome · human-confirmedsourced figures on the record
source-checked
confirmed outcomes
external evidence records
16 confirmed outcomes is a small number. That is the point. We would rather show 16 you can trust than a hundred you cannot, and label everything else as context, process, or projection.
Read the verification ladder and how to cite →A nation deciding
The communities are ahead of the governments. The report holds both in one frame.
The Commonwealth funds a national program and a national unit. At the same time, states lower the age of criminality and tighten bail. The map of what works and the politics of the moment are pulling in opposite directions, and the report shows the tension jurisdiction by jurisdiction.
Commonwealth JR program, over 4 years
communities in the national package
national delivery tender + National Unit
jurisdictions to track, position by position
The invitation
Nothing here is finished. That is the point of a living report.
No sites are published to the public record yet; the owner-only gate means only a community can flip its own. 16 outcomes are confirmed. The funding still needs to be scoped from the org down to the program. A living page turns “incomplete” into “in progress, in public”, and invites the people who can close each gap: communities claim their profile, funders read the map, governments adopt the standard.