Making Community Corrections Work

This paper draws on data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Productivity Commission,
and a range of studies conducted into the effectiveness of community corrections. It finds that:

Community corrections is growing rapidly. The national community corrections population has
grown by 18.6 percent in the last two years, and 30.2 percent since 2007. (Figure 1, Table 2)
The community corrections rate rose from 329 per 100,00 adults in September 2007 to 361
per 100,000 adults in September 2017. (Figure 3)
The fastest growth has been seen in the use of parole orders post-incarceration, suggesting
that community corrections is operating in combination with incarceration and not always as a
replacement for prison time. (Table 2)
Over the past ten years, the proportion of the community corrections population whose most
serious offence was an act intended to cause injury has risen. In 2016-17, more than 42,000
offenders whose most serious offence was a violent offence were given a principal sentence in
community corrections. (Figures 4 and 5)
Across the country, courts are increasingly using community corrections as the principal
punishment for violent offenders. This growth, however, has mostly come from community
corrections replacing monetary orders. (Figure 6)
In 2016-17, nationwide spending on community corrections was $589 million. This was less
than $22 per offender per day, about 10 percent of the cost of prison. (Section 4-1)
There is emerging evidence that community corrections is more effective than prison in
reducing reoffending, even where all relevant aspects of the different populations are
controlled for. (Section 4-2)
Completion rates vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction with no clear correlation to per offender
spending or the ratio of staff numbers to offender numbers. (Figures 11 and 12)
Nationally, offenders only served about half the community service hours to which they were
sentenced, indicating an under-supply of community service work opportunities. (Table 4)