The project was initiated by the National Corrections Advisory Group (NCAG) 1 in response to Corrective Services Administrators’ interest in more in-depth benchmarking analyses than is possible through the annual statistical collection process for the Report on Government Services (RoGS). An independent consultant was contracted in 2005 to undertake a comparative study of home detention programs currently operating in Australia and New Zealand.
The brief for the project specified that the study would be based on information provided by corrective services agencies from existing sources, would not involve the development or collation of any new statistical collections, and that access to individual offenders or their files would be outside the scope of the project.
NCAG representatives agreed that information would not be collected on individual offender characteristics, given the resource implications for providing unit record data for some jurisdictions, relative to the value added that would be provided by producing a statistical profile of detainee characteristics given the outcomes of the literature review and analyses conducted during earlier stages of the project. In response to a progress report presented at the November meeting, NCAG also agreed to “focus the scope of the study on process benchmarking comparisons, to limit analysis of outcome measures to variation in the existing indicator of ‘completion rate’ reported in the RoGS without collecting further statistical breakdowns on potential underlying factors such as socio-demographic and correctional history data, and that unit record data would not be collected”.