Criminal justice social work statistics: 2020 - 2021

8 Pre-release reports

(Table 1)

8.1 Part of statutory throughcare involves preparing reports to inform temporary release from prison on home leave and liberation on licence. In 2020-21, 940 home leave reports^[1] were produced, a fall of 41 per cent on the previous year and the lowest in the last seven years (Table 1). A total of 2,300 reports for release from prison on parole/non-parole licence were recorded in 2020-21. This was around the same as in 2019-20, after numbers had risen for the previous six years in a row. While pre-release reports in 2014-15 consisted of roughly equal numbers of home leave and parole/non-parole reports, in 2020-21 parole/non-parole reports accounted for 71 per cent of the total.

8.2 From 2006, those serving a custodial sentence may also be released early under a home detention curfew scheme. The number of home detention curfew assessments had fallen sharply in both 2018-19 and 2019-20. They rose slightly to 880 in 2020-21 but were still at a historically low level.