An independent review into the effectiveness of the ACT's Extended Throughcare post-prison support program is expected to report before the middle of the year.
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Corrections Minister, Shane Rattenbury, said the review, by the University of NSW, was likely to confirm significant reductions in repeat offending by former detainees that have already been tracked by other means.
He said the 97 to 98 per cent take-up rate of the voluntary ET program, which assists detainees to reconnect with society, was a phenomenal result.
"This is huge given the resistance a lot of the detainees have to engaging with government services post release," he said. "They are often quite service weary."
Under the program newly released detainees are helped to find housing, access health services and make or renew connections with family, friends and cultural groups and employment.
Mr Rattenbury said while the ACT had historically had Australia's lowest adult incarceration rate that distinction was now held by Tasmania which spends much less per prisoner per year.
"We had a population explosion [in prisoner numbers] about 2013," Mr Rattenbury said.
"We had a roundtable [with a wide range of stakeholders] because numbers went from 240 to 300-odd in a hurry.
"The second roundtable came in 2014. It was getting close to 350. That was our scary moment and why we built the additional capacity [at the AMC]."
By the 2015 December quarter an average of 406 detainees were in full-time custody.
Mr Rattenbury, who said the upward trend was not unique to the ACT, believes the judiciary may be reacting to community concerns about domestic violence and violent crime.
"John Walker, the criminologist who does our population modelling, talks about the [James] Bulger effect," he said.
"They can look at UK prison statistics and see that soon after he was killed [in 1993] there was a tremendous spike in the prison population.
"You saw the judiciary reacting to community expectation. I think we've seen a bit of that in Australia. I would point to Jill Meagher [murdered in 2012] as a factor that has no doubt sat in the minds of the judiciary and [also] Tara Costigan in the ACT."
"Tara's murder speaks to a broader agenda about domestic violence. I suspect [there is] perhaps a reluctance [by the judiciary] to let domestic violence offenders out on bail, or to possibly punish them for longer in light of changing community expectations."
The difference in prisoner spending between Tasmania and the ACT was partly driven by the fact Canberra had a new jail, not one that dated back to the 1950s, Mr Rattenbury said.
"Also, we do spend more money on education and on the ET Program," he said.
These programs were already starting to pay off with a measurable drop in the repeat offending [recidivism] rate among former detainees.
In 2010/2011 the general recidivism rate was 46.6 per cent; in 2011/2012 it was 41.9 per cent and by 2012/2013 it had fallen to 38.7 per cent.
Recidivism is measured over the two years after release. Because the first releases under the ET program were only made in 2013 its full impact is not yet known.
While the likelihood of discharged prisoners returning to jail as the result of a fresh offence is on the decline, inmates with a prior criminal history continue to be sent to the AMC in large numbers.
As of June 30, 2015, 75 per cent of detainees had been in jail before.
"This was the largest proportion of any state or territory," an Australian Bureau of Statistics report released on December 11, 2015, said.
Mr Rattenbury said the reduction in the rate of repeat offending was promising.
"I would expect those figures to continue to improve."
