Page 4025 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 30 November 2022
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correctional centres was brought about by Mrs Kikkert, the shadow minister for corrections, in the Corrections Management Amendment Bill 2021. I want to thank Mrs Kikkert for working with us to bring about this change.
I will now explain some of these amendments in more detail. By law, New South Wales is currently the only jurisdiction formally recognised in the ACT as a corresponding participating jurisdiction to allow for interstate community-based sentence transfers between New South Wales and the ACT. Informal arrangements for interstate transfers are in place between the ACT and all other jurisdictions. The informal arrangements operate based on the receiving jurisdiction’s discretion and pose unduly onerous travel requirements for the offender and create administrative inefficiencies for the courts and ACT Corrective Services.
The bill amends the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act and regulation so that all states and the Northern Territory can be formally recognised as participating jurisdictions, enabling the ACT to transfer and receive offenders with community-based sentences and orders throughout Australia, accompanied by a structured assessment process. The effect of the amendment is that the sentence becomes enforceable in the receiving jurisdiction, as if it had been imposed in that jurisdiction. It promotes freedom of movement by allowing people to serve their sentence interstate for a multitude of reasons, such as the proximity to family and community, employment conditions or to mitigate risks of harm or violence. The scheme also allows a person to serve their offence in a jurisdiction they normally reside in, if they should commit an offence interstate.
I recognise that there are concerns about this amendment’s implications for victim-survivors of domestic and family violence, and victims of crime more broadly. As a safeguard to minimise such risks, the amendment provides authority for an assessment process to be developed by Corrective Services to determine a person’s suitability to be transferred to the ACT, including to have regard to victim-survivors’ safety. This assessment process will be based on existing national eligibility criteria and will be finalised in consultation with stakeholders. To further strengthen victim safety, the declaration of states and the Northern Territory as participating jurisdictions in the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Regulation will be subject to delayed commencement to allow additional time for the assessment process to be finalised and notified as a notifiable instrument.
Section 102 of the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act currently requires corrections officers to report to the sentencing court on each occasion that they form a belief, on reasonable grounds, that an offender has not complied with their good behaviour order obligations. The provision does not confer any discretion on a corrections officer to respond to a breach, however minor, in any way other than referral to the sentencing court.
The bill amends the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act to enable community corrections officers to exercise limited discretion in determining how to respond to an offender’s breach of their good behaviour order obligations. The amendment will enliven once the temporary emergency COVID-19 provision at section 102A expire. The amendment adopts elements of section 102A in recognition that there may be instances where it is appropriate to allow community corrections officers to utilise a
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