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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (9 May) . . Page.. 1266 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

It is true that there has been a decline in the use of periodic detention since the Periodic Detention Centre first opened. I have a theory about that. I think the answer as to why that occurs is that it was overused when it was first created as an option for ACT courts. Members will recall that the legislation provides that a person may be diverted to a period of periodic detention where otherwise they would be sentenced to a period of imprisonment. If, however, you add together the people who in recent years have been imprisoned and those who have been sentenced to periodic detention, you will see an enormous explosion in the number of people who, but for periodic detention, would be going to jail.

I suspect there has not been a rise in crime to the extent that would warrant such an explosion, not to that degree anyway, but rather that a net widening has been experienced as a result of the additional availability of periodic detention. That is, some people who would otherwise not have been sentenced to jail but who have committed serious offences which magistrates and judges feel need to be punished in some way other than a fine or community service order or whatever it might be have in recent years been going into the PDC, an option available to the courts. In other words, what I am suggesting is that in reality, if the PDC did not exist, some of those people would not go to jail. To that extent there has been net widening.

I know the courts will deny that that is the case. As I recall, the legislation requires that a person must be otherwise facing a sentence of imprisonment before the option of PDC can be used. But it is a natural human reaction, I suspect, to sentence people in those circumstances to periodic detention where a court feels that they need a level of serious punishment which falls short of being sentenced to imprisonment.

I do not say that, as a matter of policy, I think it is a bad thing that there should be some net widening. I warned about the danger of net widening when the legislation was originally put forward back in 1994, but on reflection I think that some net widening is not necessarily a bad thing. However, I would respectfully suggest from my position as Attorney-General that the courts may have experienced some disillusionment with PDC in some cases and have determined that it should not be as widely used as it was originally when the option was first created.

That, I think, explains the reason that periodic detention is now in some decline. It is, however, extensively used. I would not say it is by any means a dead letter. It is still a very valuable option, and for some people it is an effective way of denoting community concern with the conduct that they are convicted of and perhaps of engineering a change of heart on the part of these people.

As to the declining use of community service orders, I note that some time ago Mr Stanhope issued a media release angrily demanding to know why the government was making less use of community service orders. The answer to Mr Stanhope's concern is that the government makes no use of community service orders. We do not have the power to impose community service orders. It is the courts of the territory that impose community service orders.

Mr Moore: And so it should be.

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