Page 298 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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This list is not an exhaustive list of the conduct that may be prohibited. The bill provides the Magistrates Court with the flexibility to prohibit a registered offender from engaging in any conduct that poses a risk to the lives or sexual safety of a child or children.
The bill proposes that the Magistrates Court may make a prohibition order if satisfied on the balance of probabilities of the following three elements: first, that the person is a registrable offender; second, that the person has engaged in the conduct set out in the application for the order; and, finally, by having regard to the nature and pattern of the conduct engaged in, the person poses a risk to the lives or sexual safety of one or more children, or children generally, and the making of a prohibition order will reduce this risk.
The bill proposes that the maximum term of a prohibition order for an adult is five years. For a young registered offender the bill proposes that the maximum term of the order is one year.
The bill also allows for the registered court to register a corresponding prohibition order. A corresponding prohibition order is an order that has been made for a registered offender in a jurisdiction outside of the ACT. For the order to be registered in the ACT the Magistrates Court must be satisfied that the person is a registered offender, that there is a corresponding order in force in a jurisdiction outside of the territory, and, if service was required in that outside jurisdiction, that the order was served.
For an adult corresponding offender the term of the corresponding prohibition order is the lesser of either five years or the term that is remaining on the original order. For a young corresponding offender the term of the order would be the lesser of three months or the term that is remaining on the order.
The proposed maximum penalty for breaching a prohibition order or corresponding prohibition order, in circumstances where the registered offender does not have a reasonable excuse, will be imprisonment for five years, 500 penalty units, or both. This penalty is consistent with the penalty for breaching a domestic violence protection order at section 90 of the Domestic Violence and Protection Orders Act 2008.
The government is introducing this prohibition order scheme to allow police to intervene in circumstances where there is evidence that the registrable offender poses a risk to a child or children. This intervention is aimed at protecting those children identified as at risk, and at addressing the recidivism rates of child sex offenders.
The evidence suggests that the recidivism rates for child sex offenders are between 10 and 52 per cent. However, studies note that it is difficult to accurately quantify this rate as sexual offences involving children have very low rates of reporting, detection, arrest and successful prosecution. While the exact recidivism rates are unknown, what can be said is that a significant proportion of child sex offenders will reoffend.
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