From inside the walls of Sydney's Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre, accounts of prison's vicious revolving door are all too familiar. This inmate, identified by a pseudonym as 'Susan', says she has been caught in the cycle for much of her adult life.
"I have been here every year for long periods - short periods of time mostly - for the last sixteen years," she tells Insight host Jenny Brockie. "[For] drink-driving charges, larceny, break and enter, mostly these type of charges."
It holds the most female inmates in New South Wales, and one hears conversations like this between officers and prisoners.
"Am I going to see you back as a Cat 4?" asks a senior corrections officer.
"I hope you never see me again," replies a new inmate.
"How much money do you reckon I would have if I had ten cents every time I heard, 'I am never coming back'?"
"I wouldn't put money on it. I can't promise you."
More than 40 per cent of women prisoners return to prison, according to Corrective Services NSW.
Professor Peter Norden is a former prison chaplain who now works in criminology at RMIT University in Melbourne.
He says jails are ill-equipped to rehabilitate inmates and to prevent recidivism.
"Prison can't deal with the issues that women face in the community - housing, lack of employment, trauma, mental illness, addiction. These problems have got to be dealt with through community corrections, not prison."
Once released, some, like a 28-year-old woman named 'Shannon', say they simply find life on the outside too difficult.
"And why did you breach parole?" Brockie asks her.
"Oh I didn't really have to breach it, I could have gone to rehab but I didn't want to."
"So you deliberately breached parole to get back into jail?"
"Yes."
That is a growing problem in an overcrowded jail system.
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics show more than 36,000 Australians are in full-time custody.
While women remain a small proportion of the prison population, their numbers in recent years have actually increased more dramatically than their male counterparts.
University of Melbourne criminologist Diana Johns warns jailing more women has particularly damaging effects on families.
"Imprisoning people actually adds to the cycle of dysfunction. You are removing them from their children. you are just whittling away their resources and their capacity to return to these relationships in a way that's functional and not involved in crime."
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