Queensland jails are so overcrowded authorities may be forced to house three prisoners in cells built for one once new breach bail laws come into effect.
Union Together Queensland, which covers prison guards, says "triple bunking" would have to be considered given an expected surge in prison population of potentially thousands of adults and children.
This would trigger a sanitation crisis due to insufficient toilets and showers, a particularly acute problem as staff shortages meant prisons already locked inmates in their cells for up to 20 hours a day, the union said.
Kitchens designed for a much smaller prison population would struggle to produce enough food for the inmates.
A survey of custodial corrections officers by Together Queensland found 93 per cent said their centres could not safely take more prisoners without extra staff and resources.
"There will inevitably be more assaults and injuries and potentially even deaths," Together Queensland assistant branch secretary Michael Thomas said, noting there had already been riots in two Queensland prisons in recent times.
A 7-week parliamentary committee inquiry is due to report tomorrow on the Breach Bail Go To Jail legislation, which proposes adults and children who commit serious crimes while on bail, are unlawfully at large or fail to attend court appearances, face a mandatory minimum 12 months behind bars.
The adult jail system is already operating at 136 per cent cell capacity, according to the Queensland Corrective Services 2025–26 annual report.
Thousands of single-occupancy cells have been retrofitted with a second permanent bunk bed as prisoner numbers have spiked by 54 per cent from 7,319 to 11,275 in the decade to June this year.
Only 1,400 additional prison beds are in the pipeline to be added to the jail system from next year.
Even before the introduction of the breach bail legislation, corrective services had already forecast an increase in Queensland's prisoner population of between 1,500 and 5,200 prisoners by June 2035.
Queensland's jails are already among the most overcrowded in the developed world, exceeding overcrowding rates in Malaysia, India, Thailand, Mexico and the US federal prison system, according to World Prison Brief, which tracks prison populations around the globe.
The government has not publicly released any modelling of the increase in prisoner numbers once the breach bail laws are passed, saying only that 5,248 adults would have been automatically jailed last year under the new laws.
Last year, 859 children would also likely have been jailed, a number that represents twice the capacity of the current youth justice system.
"Tents would have to be erected in the grounds of youth detention centres," said Stacey Schinnerl, Queensland secretary for the Australian Workers Union (AWU).
The new breach bail laws would produce an immediate staffing crisis, she said, as there was a mandated safety ratio of one detention centre youth worker per four young persons.
"You'd have rolling lockdowns," she said, predicting youth detention centres would need to switch to "night mode", an operational term used when severe staff shortages forced facilities to confine young people to their individual cells from 7:30 am to 7:30 pm, as well as overnight.
"There'd be an increase in assaults between young people and if history tells us anything, that would include high rates of sexual violence."
Prioritising victims over perpetrators
In a statement accompanying the legislation, the government conceded the laws "will result in limitations on children and adults' right to humane treatment".
"We have always said we would put the rights of victims before the rights of offenders," said Youth Justice and Corrective Services Minister Laura Gerber, in a statement.
Under separate legislation before the parliament, Queensland prisoners would no longer be able to complain to the Queensland Human Rights Commission about their treatment, with opponents warning that could lead to the abuse of people behind bars.
That is despite a warning from the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC), in its submission to the parliamentary inquiry, that overcrowding in Queensland jails heightened the risk for excessive use of force by staff trying to maintain control.
Kept under lockdown
Overcrowding also makes prisoner classification and separation difficult. Vulnerable prisoners or those who have committed minor crimes may not be separated from more serious or violent offenders, the CCC said.
"They're going to lose control," said Barry (not his real name), a prisoner who recently spent several months incarcerated and predicted further overcrowding could lead to rioting and assaults on correctional staff.
"When I first went to jail, lockdowns were extremely rare and only for really bad prisoners," he said. "Now 20-hour lockdowns are standard. There were times last year when I wouldn't come out for two days."
Asked what prisoners did inside the cells all day, Barry said physical fights were common and drug use was rife.
"Once a week, sometimes once a fortnight, the library cart will come around with 50 books [to share among] 800 to 900 prisoners."
Despite official warnings that approximately 30 per cent of Queensland inmates had a communicable disease, he said needle sharing was rife.
"[Prisoners] need something to do all day. We just lock them in cells for 20 hours in a cell with a TV. Give them some work to do, something to care about, so when they leave prison, they are not just going back to stealing cars and breaking into houses."
The latest Corrective Services report says more than half of released Queensland prisoners — 54.9 per cent — end up back behind bars within two years.
As of March, more than 1,000 prisoners were waiting for rehabilitation programs to address offending behaviour, with an average wait of one year and four months, according to the Queensland auditor-general.
Half the prison population was also waiting to access wellbeing programs.
The parliamentary committee's formal review report is due to be released tomorrow, after which the bill will return to the parliamentary floor for final debate and voting ahead of its targeted November implementation.
