7	Corrective services
Corrective services aim to provide a safe, secure and humane custodial environment and an effective community corrections environment in which prisoners and offenders are effectively managed, commensurate with their needs and the risks they pose to the community. Additionally, corrective services aim to reduce the risk of re-offending by providing services and program interventions that address the causes of offending, maximise the chances of successful reintegration into the community and encourage offenders to adopt a law-abiding way of life. 
The term ‘prisoners’ is used in this chapter to refer to people held in full time custody under the jurisdiction of an adult corrective service agency. This includes sentenced prisoners serving a term of imprisonment and unsentenced prisoners held on remand. ‘Periodic detainees’ refers to persons subject to a periodic detention order, which requires them to be held for two consecutive days within a one-week period in a proclaimed prison or detention centre under the responsibility of corrective services. The term ‘offenders’ is used to refer to people serving community corrections orders.
In this Report, corrective services include prison custody (including periodic detention) and a range of community corrections orders and programs for adult offenders (for example, parole and community work orders). Both public and privately operated correctional facilities are included; however, the scope of this chapter generally does not extend to:
•	juvenile justice (which is covered in the community services preface)
•	prisoners or alleged offenders held in forensic mental health facilities to receive psychiatric care (who are generally the responsibility of health departments)
•	prisoners held in police custody (who are covered in the police services chapter)
•	people held in facilities such as immigration or military detention centres.
Indigenous data in the corrective services chapter
The corrective services chapter in the Report on Government Services 2006 (2006 Report) contains the following data items on Indigenous people:
•	imprisonment rates, 2004‑05
•	community corrections rates, 2004-05
•	prisoner death rates from apparent unnatural causes, 2004-05.
Supporting tables
Supporting tables for data within the corrective services chapter of this compendium are contained in attachment 7A of the compendium. These tables are identified in references throughout this chapter by an ‘A’ suffix (for example, table 7A.3 is table 3 in the corrective services attachment). As the data are directly sourced from the 2006 Report, the compendium also notes where the original table, figure or text in the 2006 Report can be found. For example, where the compendium refers to ‘2006 Report, p. 7.15’ this is page 15 of chapter 7 of the 2006 Report, and ‘2006 Report, table 7A.2’ is attachment table 2 of attachment 7 of the 2006 Report.
Prison custody
On average, 24 092 people per day (excluding periodic detainees) were held in Australian prisons during 2004-05 — an increase of 4.7 per cent over the average daily number reported in the previous year (table 7A.1). In addition, on average, 891 people per day were serving periodic detention orders in NSW and the ACT in 2004-05 — a rise of 7.2 per cent from the 2003-04 average. 
The rate of imprisonment represents the number of prisoners (excluding periodic detainees) per 100 000 people in the corresponding adult population. The adult population includes people at or over the minimum age at which sentencing to adult custody can occur in each jurisdiction (17 years in Victoria and Queensland, and 18 years in all other jurisdictions for the reporting period). 
The national rate of imprisonment for all prisoners was 155.0 per 100 000 Australian adults in 2004‑05, compared to 150.2 in 2003-04. 
The national imprisonment rate per 100 000 Indigenous adults in 2004‑05 was 1957.1 compared with a rate of 118.0 for non‑Indigenous prisoners (figure 7.1).
Imprisonment rate comparisons need to be interpreted with care, especially for states and territories with relatively low Indigenous populations, where small changes in prisoner numbers can cause variations in rates that do not accurately represent either real trends over time or consistent differences from other jurisdictions.
While imprisonment rates for Indigenous people are far higher than those for non‑Indigenous people, the majority of prisoners are non-Indigenous. Nationally, 74.7 per cent of all prisoners were non-Indigenous in 2004-05 (table 7A.1).
Figure 7.1	Indigenous and non-Indigenous imprisonment rates, 2004‑05a, b, c
	
aNon-age standardised rates based on the daily average prisoner population numbers supplied by states and territories, calculated against adult Indigenous and non-Indigenous population estimates (population data supplied by the ABS National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics). b ACT rates include ACT prisoners held in the ACT and in NSW prisons. NSW rates exclude ACT prisoners held in NSW prisons. c Excludes prisoners reported as being of unknown Indigenous status. 
Source: State and Territory governments (unpublished); ABS (unpublished) Australian Demographic Statistics, December quarter, 2004; ABS (unpublished) Australian population projections; table 7A.3; 2006 Report, p. 7.6, figure 7.3.
The imprisonment rates in this Report have not been age standardised, therefore caution should be exercised when making comparisons between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. Using the overall (crude) imprisonment rate to examine differences between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations may lead to incorrect conclusions being drawn about variables that are correlated with age, rather than Indigenous status. The Indigenous population has a younger age profile compared to the non-Indigenous population. When the overall (crude) imprisonment rate is compared between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous population, the imprisonment rate for the former is likely to be higher because of the larger proportion of young people in the Indigenous population.
Age standardisation is a statistical method that accounts for differences in the age structures of populations, enabling more realistic comparisons to be made between populations. Age standardisation will be considered for future reports.
Community corrections
All jurisdictions provide community corrections services. Community corrections are responsible for a range of non-custodial sanctions (listed for each jurisdiction in table 7A.6) and deliver post-custodial interventions under which prisoners released into the community continue to be subject to corrective services supervision. These services vary in the extent and nature of supervision, the conditions of the order (such as a community work component or personal development program attendance) and the level of restriction placed on the person’s freedom of movement in the community (for example, home detention). No single objective or set of characteristics is common to all community corrections services, other than that they generally provide a non-custodial sentencing alternative or a post‑custodial mechanism for reintegrating prisoners into the community under continued supervision.
All jurisdictions have reparation and supervision orders. Restricted movement orders were available in all jurisdictions except Tasmania in 2004-05. In most states and territories, fine default orders are administered by community corrections, as is bail supervision in some jurisdictions.
A daily average of 52 506 offenders were serving community corrections orders across Australia in 2004‑05 — an increase of 3.3 per cent from the previous year’s average (table 7A.2). The daily average comprised 8240 Indigenous offenders (15.7 per cent of the total community corrections population), 40 145 non‑Indigenous offenders (76.5 per cent) and 4121 persons whose Indigenous status was unknown (table 7A.2).
The community corrections rate represents the number of offenders serving community corrections orders per 100 000 people in the corresponding adult population. The adult population includes people at or over the age of entry to the adult correctional system in each jurisdiction (17 years in Victoria and Queensland, and 18 years in all other jurisdictions for the reporting period). 
The national community corrections rate was 337.9 per 100 000 adults in 2004-05. The national rate for Indigenous offenders in 2004‑05 was 2946.3 per 100 000 Indigenous adults compared with 263.1 for non-Indigenous offenders (figure 7.2). 
As in the case of imprisonment rates, comparisons need to be interpreted with care, especially for those jurisdictions with relatively low Indigenous populations, where small changes in offender numbers can cause variations in rates that do not accurately represent either real trends over time or consistent differences from other jurisdictions.
Figure 7.2	Indigenous and non-Indigenous community corrections rates, 2004-05a, b
	
aNon-age standardised rates based on the daily average offender population numbers supplied by State and Territory governments, calculated against adult Indigenous and non-Indigenous population estimates (population data supplied by the ABS National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics). bExcludes offenders whose Indigenous status was reported as unknown. 
Source: State and Territory governments (unpublished); ABS (unpublished) Australian Demographic Statistics, December quarter, 2004; ABS (unpublished) Australian population projections; table 7A.3; 2006 Report, p. 7.8, figure 7.5.
Framework of performance indicators
Data for Indigenous people are reported for one of the performance indicators for corrective services in the 2006 Report. It is important to interpret these data in the context of the broader performance indicator framework outlined in figure 7.3. The performance indicator framework shows which data are comparable in the 2006 Report. For data that are not considered directly comparable, the text includes relevant caveats and supporting commentary. 
Figure 7.3	Performance indicators for corrective services
	
Source: 2006 Report, p. 7.10, figure 7.6.
Apparent unnatural deaths (prisoners)
The ‘apparent unnatural deaths’ rate is provided as an output indicator of effectiveness (box 7.1). Small numbers of incidents relative to small prisoner populations affect this indicator, in that a single incident in a smaller jurisdiction can markedly increase the rate, but have little apparent effect in the larger jurisdictions. 

Box 7.1	Apparent unnatural deaths (prisoners)	
Meeting the objective of providing a safe, secure and humane custodial environment includes providing a prison environment where there is a low risk of death from unnatural causes. A zero or low deaths rate indicates better performance towards achieving this objective.
The ‘apparent unnatural deaths’ rate is defined as the number of deaths, divided by the annual average prisoner population, multiplied by 100, where the likely cause of death is suicide, drug overdose, accidental injury and homicide, and is reported separately for Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners. 	
	
	Figure 7.4 presents information on prisoner death rates in 2004‑05 from apparent unnatural causes, for Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners.
Figure 7.4	Prisoner deaths rates from apparent unnatural causes, 2004‑05a, b
	
a Indigenous deaths rates from apparent unnatural causes represent three deaths in NSW and one death in WA in 2004-05. b Victoria, Queensland, SA, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT reported zero deaths from unnatural causes for Indigenous prisoners. 
Source: State and Territory governments (unpublished); table 7A.4; 2006 Report, p. 7.13, figure 7.7.
The national rate of deaths from apparent unnatural causes for all prisoners declined from 0.16 in 2000-01 to 0.07 in 2004-05. Rates fell for both Indigenous and non‑Indigenous prisoners (table 7A.5).

Supporting tables
Supporting tables for data within this chapter are contained in the attachment to the compendium. These tables are identified in references throughout this chapter by an ‘A’ suffix (for example, table 7A.3 is table 3 in the corrective services attachment). The tables included in the attachment are listed below. 

Table 7A.1	Average daily prisoner population  	
Table 7A.2	Average daily community corrections population and people per type of order  	
Table 7A.3	Imprisonment and community corrections rates (per 100 000 adults)  	
Table 7A.4	Death rates from apparent unnatural causes, 2004-05 (per 100 prisoners) 	
Table 7A.5	Death rates from apparent unnatural causes (per 100 prisoners) 	
Table 7A.6	Categorisation of correctional sanctions	
Single Jurisdiction Data - NSW	
Table 7A.7	 Descriptors, prisons	
Table 7A.8	 Effectiveness, prisons 	
Table 7A.9	 Descriptors, periodic detention 	
Table 7A.10	  Effectiveness, periodic detention 	
Table 7A.11	  Descriptors, community corrections 	
Single jurisdiction data - Vic	
Table 7A.12	 Descriptors, prisons	
Table 7A.13	 Effectiveness, prisons	
Table 7A.14	 Descriptors, community corrections 	
Single jurisdiction data - Qld	
Table 7A.15	 Descriptors, prisons	
Table 7A.16	 Effectiveness, prisons	
Table 7A.17	 Descriptors, community corrections	
Single jurisdiction data - WA	
Table 7A.18	 Descriptors, prisons	
Table 7A.19	 Effectiveness, prisons	
Table 7A.20	 Descriptors, community corrections	
Single jurisdiction data - SA	
Table 7A.21	 Descriptors, prisons	
Table 7A.22	 Effectiveness, prisons 	
Table 7A.23	 Descriptors, community corrections	
Single jurisdiction data - Tas	
Table 7A.24	 Descriptors, prisons	
Table 7A.25	 Effectiveness, prisons	
Table 7A.26	 Descriptors, community corrections	
Single jurisdiction data - ACT	
Table 7A.27	 Descriptors, prisons	
Table 7A.28	Effectiveness, Prisons	
Table 7A.29	 Descriptors, periodic detention	
Table 7A.30	 Effectiveness, periodic detention	
Table 7A.31	 Descriptors, community corrections	
Single jurisdiction data - NT	
Table 7A.32	 Descriptors, prisons	
Table 7A.33	 Effectiveness, prisons	
Table 7A.34	 Descriptors, community corrections