Early Release
All prisoners will get a one third reduction of their sentence if they have are assessed to have "good behaviour." You need to serve at least 21 days in prison to be eligible.
Your time in prison is divided into phases: deterrence (D) and treatment (T), known respectively as D1, D2, and D3 and T1, T2, and T3.
For the first one third of your sentence (D1, D2 and D3), you are usually not allowed to participate in most prison programmes except religious classes. Your time is mostly spent in the cell and going for yard and day room. If during phases D1, D2, and D3 you are punished for bad behaviour, you will remain in the D phase and cannot progress to the T phase. On a case by case basis, you may progress to the T phase faster (for example if the prison officers like you, or they think you may be useful for thier operations). But at least 10 to 30 percent of your sentence has to be spent in the D phase.
When you progress to the T phases, you will be eligible for work in prisons, intervention programmes and various pre-release courses.
You may be allowed to serve a portion of your sentence outside of prison; this is known as going for 'programme'. In the majority of cases, the maximum period allowed for serving your sentence outside prison is 1 year. Therefore, if your behaviour in prison is considered good, you may be released even before the one third reduction of your sentence. You may be electronically tagged or subjected to curfew timings if you are released before your one third discount to your sentence. Eg if you are sentenced to 6 years in prison, with good behaviour, your earliest date of release is after 4 years. But if you are eligible for 'programme', you will be released at the earliest on your 3rd year.
Time spent in remand will be counted towards the duration of your sentence.
Foreigners are usually the lowest on the priority for 'programme' and other programmes arranged by the prison.