The decision to remove Labour's prison reduction target, is being described as a failure by an academic

Along with scrapping the 30 percent reduction target, the Government's also stopping taxpayer funding for pre-sentencing cultural reports.

Those reports consider how an offender's personal, family or cultural background may have contributed to their crime.

Victoria University criminology lecturer Liam Martin says removing the target is a signal of a wider move towards policy that doesn't work.

He says prisons don't work in the way we want, and locking up more people won't bring down crime -- so we need to think differently.