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 2007 (2007 Report) contains the following data items on Indigenous people:
•	imprisonment rates, 2005‑06
•	community corrections rates, 2005-06
•	prisoner death rates from apparent unnatural causes, 2005-06.
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 2007 Report, the compendium also notes where the original table, figure or text in the 2007 Report can be found. For example, where the compendium refers to ‘2007 Report, p. 7.15’ this is page 15 of chapter 7 of the 2007 Report, and ‘2007 Report, table 7A.2’ is attachment table 2 of attachment 7A of the 2007 Report.
Prison custody
On average, 24 541 people per day (excluding periodic detainees) were held in Australian prisons during 2005-06 — an increase of 1.9 per cent over the average daily number reported in the previous year (table 7A.1). In addition, on average, 862 people per day were serving periodic detention orders in NSW and the ACT in 2005-06 — a decrease of 3.3 per cent from the 2004-05 average. 
The daily average number of Indigenous prisoners was 5815 — 23.7 per cent of prisoners nationally (table 7A.1).
The rate of imprisonment represents the number of prisoners (excluding periodic detainees) per 100 000 people in the corresponding adult population. The adult population refers to people at or over the minimum age at which offenders are generally sentenced as adults in each jurisdiction (17 years in Queensland and 18 years in all other jurisdictions for the reporting period). 
The national rate of imprisonment for all prisoners was 156.4 per 100 000 Australian adults in 2005‑06, compared to 155.0 in 2004-05 (table 7A.3).
The national imprisonment rate per 100 000 Indigenous adults in 2005‑06 was 2030.6 compared with a rate of 118.7 for non‑Indigenous prisoners (figure 7.1).
Imprisonment rate comparisons need to be interpreted with care, especially for states and territories with relatively small 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, 74.5 per cent of all prisoners were non-Indigenous in 2005-06 (table 7A.1).
Figure 7.1	Indigenous and non-Indigenous imprisonment rates, 2005‑06a, b, c
	
aNon-age standardised rates based on the daily average prisoner population numbers supplied by State and Territory governments, calculated against adult Indigenous and non-Indigenous population estimates (population data supplied by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics). b The 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 whose Indigenous status was reported as unknown. 
Source: State and Territory governments (unpublished); ABS (unpublished) Australian Demographic Statistics, December quarter, 2005 (preliminary); ABS (unpublished) Indigenous population projections (low series); table 7A.3; 2007 Report, figure 7.3, p. 7.6.
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 offender’s freedom of movement in the community (for example, home detention). No single objective or set of characteristics is common to all jurisdictions’ 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 and the ACT in 2005-06. Home detention was removed as a sentencing option as of June 2005 in the ACT, although the program continued to operate up to 23 September 2005 until all outstanding orders were completed. In most states and territories, fine default orders are administered by community corrections, as is bail supervision in some jurisdictions.
A daily average of 53 243 offenders were serving community corrections orders across Australia in 2005‑06 — an increase of 1.4 per cent from the previous year’s average (table 7A.2). This daily average comprised 43 538 males (81.8 per cent), 9597 females (18.0 per cent) and 108 offenders whose gender was not reported. The daily average comprised 9088 Indigenous offenders (17.1 per cent of the total community correction population), 42 017 non‑Indigenous offenders (78.9 per cent) and 2139 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 refers to people at or over the minimum age at which offenders are generally sentenced as adults in each jurisdiction (17 years in Queensland and 18 years in all other jurisdictions for the reporting period).
The national community corrections rate was 339.4 per 100 000 adults in 2005‑06. The national rate for Indigenous offenders in 2005‑06 was 3173.3 per 100 000 Indigenous adults compared with 272.8 for non-Indigenous offenders (figure 7.2). 
As with imprisonment rates, comparisons need to be interpreted with care, especially for those jurisdictions with relatively small 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. Further, community corrections rates presented in figure 7.2 are not age standardised (that is, they are not adjusted to account for the different age structures of the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations).
Figure 7.2	Indigenous and non-Indigenous community corrections rates, 2005-06a, 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, 2005 (preliminary); ABS (unpublished) Indigenous population projections (low series); table 7A.3; 2007 Report, figure 7.5, p. 7.9.
Framework of performance indicators
Data for Indigenous people are reported for one of the performance indicators for corrective services in the 2007 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 2007 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: 2007 Report, figure 7.6, p. 7.11.
Apparent unnatural deaths (prisoners)
The rate of apparent unnatural deaths is an output indicator of effectiveness (box 7.1). 
Box 7.1	Apparent unnatural deaths (prisoners)	
Meeting the objective of providing a safe, secure and humane custodial environment includes providing a prison environment in which there is a low risk of death from unnatural causes. A zero or low rate indicates better performance towards achieving this objective.
The rate of apparent unnatural deaths is defined as the number of deaths, divided by the annual average prisoner population, multiplied by 100 (to give the rate per 100 prisoners), where the likely cause of death is suicide, drug overdose, accidental injury or homicide, and is reported separately for Indigenous and non‑Indigenous prisoners. 
Rates should be interpreted with caution. A single incident in a jurisdiction with a relatively small prisoner population can significantly increase the rate in that jurisdiction, but would have only a minor impact in jurisdictions with larger prisoner populations. A relatively high rate in a jurisdiction with a small prisoner population may represent only a very small number of actual incidents.	
Figure 7.4 presents information on prisoner death rates in 2005‑06 from apparent unnatural causes, for Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners. There were no deaths of Indigenous prisoners from apparent unnatural causes in any jurisdiction in 2005-06.
Figure 7.4	Rate of prisoner deaths from apparent unnatural causes, 2005‑06a, b
	
a Indigenous death rates from apparent unnatural causes were zero for all jurisdictions in 2005-06. b Queensland, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT also reported zero deaths from unnatural causes for non‑Indigenous prisoners. 
Source: State and Territory governments (unpublished); table 7A.4; 2007 Report, figure 7.7, p. 7.14.
The national rate of deaths from apparent unnatural causes for all prisoners has declined consistently over the last five years from 0.12 in 2001-02 to 0.04 in 2005‑06. Rates fell for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners (table 7A.5).
Future directions in performance reporting
In line with the 2006 Strategic Plan for Corrective Services, age standardisation of imprisonment rates, disaggregation of selected indicators by Indigenous status and remoteness areas, as well as the development of access indicators are also being examined for incorporation in future Reports.

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 offender population  	
Table 7A.3	Imprisonment and community corrections rates, by sex and Indigenous status (per 100 000 adults)  	
Table 7A.4	Death rates from apparent unnatural causes, by Indigenous status, 2005-06 (per 100 prisoners) 	
Table 7A.5	Death rates from apparent unnatural causes, by year and Indigenous status (per 100 prisoners) 	
Table 7A.6	Categorisation of correctional sanctions (operating during 2005-06)	
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