Data sources include the Australian Prison Trends for the rates of sentence and remand prisoners per 100,000 population, the intake rates of sentence prisoners, and the Australian Prisoners publication for 1990 for intake rates of remand prisoners. The NSW prison has a substantially higher prisoner population rate for both sentenced (2.5 times higher) and remand prisoners (1.6 times higher) rates than that of Victoria. The sentenced prisoner arrival rate in NSW is more than twice the rate in Victoria. However, compared with Victoria, the higher prisoner rate per 100,000 population in NSW seems to be due to more people being sent to jail either as sentenced or remand prisoners rather than to length of time spent by prisoners in custody. The higher prisoner reception rates in NSW both for sentence and remand prisoners seem to result from the relatively higher number of people appearing before the lower and upper courts. 2 figures, 4 tables, and 19 notes