https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9818-1174
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ABSTRACT
New South Wales has the largest population of incarcerated people in Australia, with increasing levels of community supervision. Corrective Services NSW offers eligible people the EQUIPS suite of offender treatment programs, which follow the Risk-Need-Responsivity model of offender rehabilitation. Referrals to the programs are also targeted to meet the specific reoffending needs of individuals, including EQUIPS Foundation, Aggression, Addiction and Domestic Abuse. This study examined the profile of people targeted for treatment in NSW by examining demographic, sentencing and criminogenic characteristics within a cohort of 18,963 individuals allocated to attend EQUIPS programs in custody and in the community between 2015 and 2018. Most individuals allocated to EQUIPS programs (80%) had a history of criminal justice system involvement, were male, with low education and most often from major cities or inner regional areas. Around a third were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. Less than half of those referred to EQUIPS participated in at least one treatment session and only one quarter completed the course of treatment. Recommendations for improved program delivery include: 1) more timely risk assessment and allocation to programs during individual’s sentences; and 2) enhancing equitable allocation between custodial and community settings based on individual risk and the types of programs available.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge Dr Yun Zhang for her support in setting up the project and Ms Monica Carvalheiro for assistance with manuscript preparation. Authors EB, NN and MB were commissioned to undertake this work by CSNSW. MH is an employee of CSNSW. MB, EB, NN, MH led the conception of the study and MB lead the analyses and interpretation of the data, with assistance from MH, LS, MD, NN and EB. All authors contributed to and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Since the time of this study, LSI-R eligibility criteria for people in custody has been replaced by above average risk on an automated actuarial risk assessment tool that estimates risk of returning to CSNSW with a new conviction within two years, named the Custody Triage Risk Assessment Scale (Custody-TRAS; Raudino et al., Citation2019).