Recommendation 112

This recommendation is assigned to CSNSW.

Recommendation

That adequate resources be made available to provide support by way of personnel and infrastructure so as to ensure that non-custodial sentencing options which are made available by legislation are capable of implementation in practice. It is particularly important that such support be provided in rural and remote areas of significant Aboriginal population.

Recommendation 112 is contained within National Volume 3, Part D, Chapter 22.5 Alternatives to Imprisonment; the trend to Community-based options.

Context

The Royal Commission acknowledged a growing awareness in the value of community based sentencing options though considered that the limited reduction in the numbers of Aboriginal people imprisoned as a result of those options may suggest that community-based sentencing options were being used as alternatives to fines or discharges rather than alternatives to imprisonment. Recommendation 112 is directed to ensuring non-custodial sentencing options are actually available to Aboriginal people and not just available in name only.

Detail of implementation

NSW Government has a commitment from Treasury that Budgets will be related to workload through the Demand Funding Model.  

The purpose of the Demand Funding model is to calculate the change in the Departmental funding requirements that result from a change in system demand. A demand funding budget proposal is produced by multiplying unit costs and volume forecast on incremental demand growth. The unit costs are calculated based on the Unit Costing Model which allocates costs to defined demand units based on prior year actuals adjusted for inflation and government decisions. The volume forecast on incremental demand growth is calculated by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) who simulate demand changes in volumes with a reflection of agreed service level and approved policy reforms.

The marked increase in the underlying offender population sentenced to community orders as a result of the implementation of sentencing reform has resulted in a proportional increase in demand funding projections.

Other considerations:

• In theory the above response indicates that approved policy reforms are part of the calculation of demand funding adjustments.   These would need to be the subject of a New Policy Proposal (NPP).  
• The model is only as good as the assumptions. 
• If CSNSW as a whole did not require more funding, reallocation of costs would need to be done internally e.g., from Custodial corrections to Community corrections. 

CSNSW does not take an additional approach to regional areas in the budget, however there are policies in place to divert resources where required. 

Community Corrections ensures services are prioritised to those offenders who present the greatest risk to community safety. The Remote Service Delivery Team (RSDT) was established to assist in managing offender risk and workload fluctuations around the state. The team provides remote supervision of suitable offenders to assist Community Corrections offices with resource pressures and responsibility for offenders with high-risk profiles. This enables support to be targeted to areas with the highest need and resources targeted around the state as needed.

Support for locations is constantly reprioritised as workload pressures and offender risk shift around the state. The team are now supervising 632 offenders and supporting 26 offices across the state.

This reduces the need for these locations to suspend supervision of medium risk offenders due to workload or resourcing pressures. It also enables the local office to provide quality service to their high-risk offenders. Priority for the RSDT is determined through the use of a statewide risk assessment tool. 

The RSDT was established in late January 2021 with 12 staff and commenced managing offenders in February 2021. All 45 members of the RSDT team have now been recruited – they are located across the state, from locations as diverse as Tweed Heads to Broken Hill, Sydney and Albury. 

Feedback received from around the state has been very positive regarding the efficient and professional support being provided by the team.