Question:
Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang: To ask the Minister for Home Affairs for each year from 2012 to 2016, what is the percentage of local inmates detained, convicted and imprisoned again for a new offence within five years from their release from (i) the Drug Rehabilitation Centres (ii) Long-Term Imprisonment 1 and (iii) Long-Term Imprisonment 2 regimes respectively.
Answer:
1. Singapore Prison Service (SPS) currently publishes two-year recidivism rates, as this is aligned with standard international calculations for measuring recidivism, and allows for meaningful comparison across time and jurisdictions.
2. Compared to longer time spans, two-year recidivism rates are a more sensitive measure of the effectiveness of prison regimes, including the Drug Rehabilitation Centre (DRC) and Long-Term Imprisonment (LT). After the two-year mark, ex-offenders' behaviour would tend to be influenced more by other environmental factors. Recidivism rates over a longer time frame will hence be higher.
3. The two-year recidivism rates for persons released from DRC, LT1 and LT2 from 2012 to 2014 are as follows. The two-year recidivism rates for 2015 and 2016 are not available yet.
|
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
| DRC |
28.3% |
31.9% |
30.1% |
| LT1 |
36.0% |
27.0% |
28.4% |
| LT2 |
42.0% |
37.2% |
36.5% |
