Page 2206 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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we are unable to do something that other jurisdictions can do. I will refer Mrs Dunne to the findings of both New South Wales and Victorian criminal justice agencies when they themselves have also looked at this issue.
It is the case that, while information on a prior history is on an individual’s file before a court, these are not statistics that are routinely collected for either the report on government services or for Australian Bureau of Statistics reporting purposes. Like many jurisdictions, the ACT has agencies that each play their important role in the criminal justice system and they each collect data that relates to that role.
It is worth highlighting what both the Victorian and New South Wales agencies have said in relation to the data Mrs Dunne is seeking. In particular I draw Mrs Dunne’s and the opposition’s attention to the findings of the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s bail review, its final report, which was published in 2007. It provides some useful observations with specific reference to Mrs Dunne’s motion. One of the terms of reference of that review included reviewing:
… the provisions of the Bail Act 1977 and its practical operation in order to ensure that it is consistent with the overall objectives of the criminal justice system including … the protection of the public, including the victims of crime.
The review was conducted over a period of a number of years and involved gathering and reviewing an extensive body of information. The difficulties involved in gathering the sort of information Mrs Dunne asks for in her motion are noted by the commission. In particular the commission said:
Obtaining a true picture of offending on bail requires tracking individual offenders through police and court records. This is because offending is not always detected immediately; people are often charged some time later with offences alleged to have been committed when they were on bail. It would also be necessary to track thousands of offenders to obtain a true picture.
In addition, where the Victorian Law Reform Commission has discussed figures as to the number of people breaching bail conditions generally, these are mentioned briefly in the commission’s report in the context of bail support and are provided with reference to a specific drug strategy division initiative indicating the sort of focused study that may be required to obtain such data so that it is accurate and useful.
Similarly in New South Wales the independent Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, or BOCSAR as it is known, is responsible for compiling evidence on important criminal justice matters. The breadth of BOCSAR’s statistical analysis in relation to bail is apparent in its 2010 New South Wales Parliamentary Library Research Service’s report titled Bail law: developments, debate and statistics. The report includes BOCSAR research on people refused bail and who were later acquitted and people who were granted bail and who failed to appear in court. However, on the question of offending rates while on bail the report notes that there were no available statistics on this aspect.
This report evidences the observations of the Victorian Law Reform Commission and it highlights that, despite the very significant resources that are available to large
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