Originally touted as "the most human-rights-compliant, rehabilitation-focussed prison in the world" by the then chief minister Jon Stanhope, Canberra's only jail has been plagued, in the nearly nine years since it first began accepting prisoners, by controversy. Bashings, stabbing, escapes, the accidental release of a prisoner, rampant drug use leading to high levels of Hepatitis C amongst inmates and, in 2015, the death of Aboriginal detainee Steven Freeman - the list goes on.

It's easy to write off the prison as a failure, at least in the context of the lofty goals Stanhope once set for it. He named it after a 19th century penal reformer who brought new ideas to the colonies about the treatment of prisoners. Lieutenant Maconochie saw prisoners being treated with sickening brutality and regularly dying as a result. He immediately instituted policies that restored their dignity and effectively eliminated recidivism among Britain's "worst" criminals.

But the "worst" criminals of 19th century colonial Australia clearly had nothing on their 21st century counterparts, the "hardcore criminals, gang members and murderers" the jail was never designed to accommodate.

This week, prominent local welfare advocate Julie Tongs called for some of the prison's worst detainees to be transferred interstate to maximum security jails in NSW.

But wouldn't this just be avoiding the very challenge the prison was designed to address?

The Australian prison system aims to balance deterrence with rehabilitation. But how then to decide which prisoners are so beyond redemption that they be shipped elsewhere? Is there a checklist of some kind, a time limit beyond which it's acceptable to give up hope for an individual?

More than a year after a damning independent review of the prison was handed down of Freeman's treatment in the lead-up to his death - he was bashed brutally while inside the centre - the ACT government has announced an extra $17 million will be spent on additional health services and security inside the jail.

It has also maintained there are no plans to send inmates interstate to manage over-crowding at the jail, preferring instead to focus on expanding the jail's capacity to accommodate rising inmate numbers.

Opposition corrections spokeswoman Guilia Jones says the prison is just too ambitious in "trying to house every kind of prisoner the ACT produces".

But ACT Corrections Minister Shane Rattenbury points out that keeping Canberra prisoners in Canberra, close to their families and community, is a vital component of the rehabilitative process.

This adherence to one of its namesake's fundamental tenets makes the AMC Australia's most expensive jail, costing the territory government $436 per inmate per day, almost $160,000 per year, in 2016-17.

What would Alexander Maconochie have done when faced with this kind of cold hard economic reality? He might well have accepted defeat when it came to the Marcus Rappels and Rebecca Masseys of this world, and sacrificed the few (around 16 murderers among the 40 long-termers) to save the 400-odd other inmates incarcerated at any given time.