Community Detention

Community detention (CD) is a community-based sentence that requires the offender to comply with an electronically-monitored curfew imposed by the court. Offenders can be sentenced to CD for up to six months. Curfews can total up to 84 hours per week. The minimum curfew period is two hours.

Having your say

If an offender is being considered for CD, community probation staff will check if the address is suitable and if the offender has the support of family or other occupants living there. A probation officer will visit you to talk about what it might be like having an offender on an electronically-monitored curfew at your home.  No offender will be required to stay at your home subject to curfew without your informed consent.

What does community detention mean for you?

If there is an offender curfewed to your address, you will need to:

• agree to have monitoring equipment in the home
   
• provide access to the house for community probation staff to maintain the electronic monitoring equipment

It is an offence to refuse community probation staff access to the address to maintain or check the electronic monitoring equipment.

What do probation staff do?

Community probation staff, including probation officers and senior community work supervisors, will:

• monitor the offender’s compliance with their curfews
• arrange for the installation, maintenance, and removal of electronic monitoring equipment
• consider, and may approve, an offender’s requests for absences
• provide advice and support to anyone sharing the address where the offender is curfewed.

Monitoring the offender

Offenders on CD are required to wear an electronic anklet during their sentence. This will monitor their whereabouts during their curfew periods and any tampering or interference with the monitoring equipment.  If the offender tries to remove the anklet or leaves the curfew address during a curfew, an alarm is triggered and this is reported to Corrections.

Enforcing the conditions

If the conditions of CD are not met a person can be fined up to $1500 or sent to prison for a maximum of six months. An offender on CD can receive formal warnings depending on the nature of non-compliance. Other community-based sentences could also be imposed.