Written Reply to Parliament Question on Recidivism of Local Inmates of Drug Rehabilitation Centres and Long-Term Imprisonment Regimes by Mr K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law

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.