Recidivism Rates for Child Sexual Abuse Offences over Past 10 Years

Mr Ng Shi Xuan asked the Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs what are the two-year, five-year and 10-year recidivism rates for child sexual abuse offences over the past 10 years.

Mr K Shanmugam: Table 1 below shows the two-year and five-year recidivism rates 1 of local offenders who were incarcerated for child sexual abuse offences and whose re-offending offence was also a child sexual abuse offence. The recidivism rates for such offenders are generally low but are prone to fluctuation since the number of such offenders released each year is small.

Note(s) to Question No(s) 2:

1 Recidivism rate is defined as the percentage of local inmates who were released in any particular year, and who were subsequently convicted and imprisoned or detained again for a new offence. The data on 10-year recidivism rates is not available as this is not a commonly used benchmark to measure recidivism.