Up to 150 inmates per year will be offered help finding housing and work post-jail under a "significant" expansion of a program designed to help curb recidivism in the ACT.
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About three-quarters of detainees at the Alexander Maconochie Centre have been in jail before. But the pilot of the Throughcare program cut the rate of people returning to jail by 23 per cent.
The ACT government allocated $5.3 million in the June budget to continue the program over the next four years.
The program has now been put out to tender, with documents noting the model was a "significant extension of the existing Throughcare concept".
According to the tender documents, 130 men and 20 women will be helped per year.
About 15 per cent of men and 50 per cent of women will be referred post-release.
And the successful tenderer must have scope to provide material support, such as work clothes, to ex-inmates not formally involved in the program 10 times a month at most.
"The services may be requested for clients prior to and upon release from AMC or for clients released from the law courts, and will form a part of the ACTCS Extended Throughcare Program," a Justice and Community Safety Directorate spokesman said.
"Where possible, the services will commence two weeks prior to client release at the AMC and continue to support the clients for a period during post-release."
On the day of their release, ex-inmates will be given clothes, a mobile phone, basic toiletries, ID and a way to leave the Hume prison.
They next get help with accommodation and finding a job and are connected with health care workers if they need to be.
Case workers will help the former detainees readjust to life on the outside and help link them back into their community.
Of the expected 150 referrals per year, up to 35 will only receive a fortnight of support, up to 80 will get help for a month and another 35 will need six weeks' worth of help.
Case workers have to be on hand to meet with the ex-inmate and drive them to appointments with agencies like Centrelink.
The successful tenderer will have to make detailed reports on ex-inmates' progress and provide a breakdown of contact to the government.
They'll need to be able to accept referrals at short notice and they will have to offer an intensity of support tailored to each former detainee.
The contract will run for a minimum of three years to give "greater certainty" to clients and the provider, a JACS spokesman said.
A University of New South Wales evaluation of the pilot found the program cost "a relatively marginal" $4700 per participant, compared to the $120,000 a year it costs to house them in AMC. The pilot program cost $4.7 million.
The program was criticised for failing to stop Indigenous inmates - who make up a quarter of the prison population - from returning to jail.
A spokesperson for Corrective Services said at the time more focus would be put on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inmates in the extended Throughcare program.
