Page 924 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 20 March 2012
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to engage those who commit crime. It is about breaking cycles of offending and the associated cycles of vulnerability, including poor mental and physical health, low levels of education, unstable or no employment and unreliable or no housing. These are the factors that can make crime rates rise. It is about working with vulnerable and at risk youth to engage them in education, to engage them in training, to engage them in employment and to ultimately choose education and employment over the choice to commit crime.
The government uses a broad range of programs, projects and activities to draw and create an evidence-based approach. We use resources such as expert knowledge from the Australian Institute of Criminology and the ABS. We use subject matter experts based in our universities locally and nationally and we draw on published research from a broad range of sources. We look at statistics—both local and national—stakeholder consultations, the results of previous program and policy evaluations. We look at detailed costings of policy options, in-depth qualitative interviews and outputs from economic and statistical modelling. These are the sources of evidence used in developing the ACT’s evidence-based approach to reducing crime.
One of the central goals of the criminal justice system is to reduce crime, in particular, through the sentencing of convicted offenders. The task of a judge or magistrate sentencing an offender is to impose a sentence in a manner that applies sentencing principles and considerations to all cases equally. The sentencing court must balance the needs of the victim, the community and the offender, determine the factual basis on which the sentence should be imposed and consider the circumstances of the offence.
The government is strongly committed to improving the quality of information available to courts when it comes to sentencing. We are also committed to improving the community’s understanding of sentencing decisions made by our courts. Clearly there is an opportunity to improve on the quality and amount of information on sentencing decisions in the ACT. For this reason, the Labor government is looking at options for giving the courts, the legal profession, policymakers and the community better access to sentencing decisions and the circumstances of particular cases that sit behind those decisions.
I have previously advised that the government has conducted a feasibility study of using the New South Wales Judicial Commission website to allow improved access to sentences handed down in the territory. Judges and magistrates have had access to New South Wales sentencing data to better inform their own decisions since 2010. Other matters currently being considered by government aimed at improving sentencing information are now being considered through the budget cabinet process.
I would like to address, while I am on my feet, the issue raised by Ms Hunter in relation to the culpable driving penalties and to reject some of the suggestions she made in her comments. She suggested that that measure was a direct result of an analysis of how ACT sentences for culpable driving causing death and serious injury or serious harm compared with other jurisdictions. Yes, we did do that analysis, but what Ms Hunter failed to mention in her critique on that matter is the fact that the ACT Court of Appeal itself said in response to an appeal made by the Director of
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