Page 2458 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 1 July 2008
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justice and adult justice. But at the end of the day young people, unfortunately, will commit crimes. Many could be very serious, which means the community expects a term of incarceration in a youth detention facility.
It is a worry of course, with the ACT courts being notoriously lenient when it comes to sentencing adults and, indeed, individuals, that they might go off on a bit of a tangent in relation to provisions such as this. It is important, I think, that courts abide by community expectations. Too often we do see victims of crime complaining that justice has not been served; too often we do see courts too give consideration to the feelings and emotions of offenders, and do that much more than they have to the feelings and emotions and, indeed, fears of the victims of crime; and too often we have seen police frustrated by what they see as a waste of time in preparing evidence in cases, or indeed often even charging offenders, because they see offenders, sometimes serious and repeat offenders, treated with too much leniency and given bond after bond, regardless of the breaches.
I have previously proposed a regime of sentencing guidelines for the ACT. I think the bill, in about the fourth edition, is still before this Assembly. It is much like the regime which the Labor government in New South Wales introduced and passed. It works very well. I think we do need consistency with our interstate colleagues, especially in New South Wales. The area of sentencing is something which the opposition will be looking very carefully at in the operation of this particular bill.
Indeed I go back to my initial premise. I think there should have been two separate bills, one dealing with the criminal aspects and one dealing with the care aspects for young people. I think the scrutiny committee has made some valid comments too, which I would commend to the Assembly.
I think it is very important that, generally when it comes to sentencing not only of juveniles but of adults, we do bring ourselves into line with sentencing practices interstate. Clearly, the bills that we have been introducing over the past four or five years would form the basis of it should we be elected to government in October this year. People do want a justice system that delivers on community expectations and they do want a justice system that does provide justice for all and is not skewed one way or the other.
Mention was made of—and it is one of the problems here—proposed new chapter 8A. The legislation we have at present contains a statutory remission system which can permit a young person subject to a detention order to be released on licence, if, for instance, they have been of good behaviour whilst detained. I can see what the government is doing here. It is providing a regime where the courts, for example, would sentence someone to 12 or 18 months detention, suspended after six months, to be of good behaviour. That has been a common practice for decades in our justice system. I think they miss a bit of flexibility there. In some instances, that may encourage the courts to impose a shorter term of incarceration as a head sentence than is actually necessary.
The current provisions, as I understand them, available to courts, for both adults and children, are, in short, that someone could be sentenced to 18 months incarceration.
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