6 Prison release-ordered offenders
6.1 Overview
Depending on the nature of the imposed sentence and/or judicial orders at the time of sentencing, prisoners may be released at a pre-determined statutory release date (often with pre-determined court order release conditions) or at the discretion of the New Zealand Parole Board. The current category of offenders, "prison release-ordered offenders", includes all those who are released under such court or parole board orders. This category includes those released on parole, home detention orders (for the new home detention sentences see the sections on community sentences), post-release conditions and extended supervision. Corrections itself does not decide on such release dates or on the nature of the conditions that apply but, following release, these offenders are managed by Corrections' Community Probation Service.
Up to 2007, the noticeable growth in offenders managed as "short term released on conditions" reflects the fact that this order was created by legislative changes in mid-2002 (and subsequently modified in 2004), with numbers building to a new steady state by the end of 2006. The recent drop in the number of these offenders relates to the drop in the rate of short term prison sentences issued since the introduction of new types of community sentences in October 2007.
Also since October 2007, the mix of "long term released on parole" prisoners and "long term released to home detention" prisoners has changed, with home detention orders being used less commonly now. In this document the term "home detention order" is used for continuity. However with the introduction of changes to the Parole Act 2002 in October 2007 "home detention orders" are now referred to in other reports as "parole with full residential conditions". In practice they are the same type of management regime. Before the above changes were introduced it was possible for the New Zealand Parole Board to release a prisoner three months earlier if given a home detention order than if given a parole order. Since October 2007 this is no longer possible and now a prisoner is simply given a parole order with full residential conditions.
An annual throughput perspective is not presented on "prison release-ordered" offenders. Only the snapshot perspective is given here. For information on the throughput numbers see Figure 9.6 Starts and completions of release-ordered episodes. The mix of "prison release-ordered" offenders follows closely the mix of "prison sentenced" offenders.
6.2 Release ordered snapshot trend by major management category
For more details see: data source and enrichment methodology; data spreadsheet; major management category.
The graph above shows a relatively large growth in counts of "Short term released on conditions" offenders. These are prisoners sentenced to less than or equal to two years imprisonment with release conditions imposed by the court at the time of sentencing. The growth in these offender counts relates to policy changes and progressive uptake of this option by the judiciary. From the introduction of the Sentencing Act 2002 through to 2004, most of the growth in offenders sentenced to "short term released on conditions" related to an increasing proportion of prison sentences of one year or less being given associated release conditions at the time of sentencing. Then from 2004 to 2007, the growth related to the Sentencing Amendment Act 2004, which provided for longer durations of release condition orders. This amendment resulted in the average period of release conditions imposed by the court to climb from an average duration of approximately 150 days to an average of over 250 days.
The 2007 downturn in "short term released to home detention" and "short term released on conditions" relate to the introduction of new types of community sentences in October 2007 and the associated elimination of Parole Board ordered releases from short term prison to home detention.
One can also see a 2007 reduction in the numbers of those classified as "long term released to home detention". This relates to changes introduced by the Criminal Justice Reform Bill 2007 which modified the Parole Act 2002. This changed the timing [4] of Parole Board ordered "back end" home detention releases from being three months before standard parole to being in line with the timing of standard parole. As a result, the Parole Board is issuing fewer orders of "parole with full residential conditions" than its predecessor order of "long term released to home detention".
6.3 Release ordered snapshot trend by gender
For more details see: data source and enrichment methodology; data spreadsheet
6.4 Release ordered snapshot trend by age
For more details see: data source and enrichment methodology; data spreadsheet
6.5 Release ordered snapshot trend by preferred ethnicity
For more details see: data source and enrichment methodology; data spreadsheet; preferred ethnicity
6.6 Release ordered snapshot at 30/06/2009 by management category and gender
For more details see: data source and enrichment methodology; data spreadsheet; major management category
6.7 Release ordered snapshot at 30/06/2009 by ethnicity
For more details see: data source and enrichment methodology; data spreadsheet; major management category
Small numbers of "Short term released on parole" and "Long term released on conditions" are filtered from the view above.
6.8 Release ordered snapshot at 30/06/2009 by management and age groups
For more details see: data source and enrichment methodology; data spreadsheet; major management category
6.9 Release ordered snapshot at 30/06/2009 by management and offence categories
For more details see: data source and enrichment methodology; data spreadsheet; major management category; offence category.
The graph above shows that the mix of offence categories for "prison released" offenders managed in the community varies according to the term of the imposed prison sentence and the nature of the subsequent community supervision ordered.
Footnotes
[4] The Criminal Justice Reform Bill also changed "long term sentenced released to home detention" orders from being a distinct and separate order type so that it is now simply the addition of residential conditions to a parole order. However where other documents now refer to "Parole with full residential conditions" this document largely includes these order subtypes under the descriptive heading of "Long term released to home detention" for the sake of continuity.