Page 4466 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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transcripts. Now that Mr Berry has brought it up, I think it is probably appropriate that we look at some of the matters that were raised there.
Following a question from Mr Berry, Mr Chivers indicated:
Well, I think what was being said before was it is notoriously difficult to develop reasonable measures of recidivism, it is something that is - typically that has plagued the Institute of Criminology for many years. But the way we are tackling this is for every new corrections program we are setting up measures, a process of looking at the outcomes of involvement in those programs.
For example, in the attendance centre program, we will be looking at the rate of re-offending by everyone who comes through that program.
I think that is a factor, Mr Speaker, that Mr Berry has chosen, once again, to overlook in his attempt to make cheap political points. The final point that I wish to make in relation to this is that Mr Chivers did provide an estimation at page 829 of the Estimates Committee transcript where, once again in answer to a question from Mr Berry, he said:
We estimate that about 90 per cent of our CSO offenders -
"CSO" means community service orders -
do not come back before us within 12 months of completing their order.
I asked "That is an estimate?", and Mr Chivers said, "That is an estimate". He then went on to say:
That is the best estimate we can make. If they offend in other States -
I repeat, if they offend in other States -
we have no record, so it is the best measure we can come up with.
I think that is a very important point, Mr Speaker. Some of the people who are involved in these unfortunate situations move on to other States after they have experienced difficulties in the ACT. Once they get to these other areas, they may go down the rocky road that resulted in their being involved with community service orders in the ACT. It is a difficult area, and I think Mr Berry should seek to recognise the important fact that we are unable to measure effectively, to the nth degree, this aspect of it, because people in that unfortunate situation often leave town and may reoffend in another state and become part of the statistics of the other States.
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