Page 4228 - Week 13 - Thursday, 27 November 2014
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place. We have been very clear that we will be introducing a scheme of intensive community correction orders.
What needs to happen, though, is that a cap needs to be put on periodic detention. We cannot just leave it open-ended. That needs to be constrained so that we are not pouring resources into a scheme that is perhaps only necessary for one, two or three people on a weekend somewhere in the future as we move to an alternative sentencing approach.
It is disingenuous to come in here and say that there are no alternatives when members know full well that an alternative scheme will be legislated. A series of bills will create the mechanisms for those schemes. Members know that. So to come in here and say there are no alternatives is disingenuous at best.
I believe that we are moving to a better justice system that will meet community expectations of safe, secure and rehabilitative focused outcomes for people who have spent their time in jail, and I am pleased to support this bill today.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Capital Metro) (4.30), in reply: The purpose of this bill is to amend the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 by restricting the ability of courts to impose a sentence in a criminal case which involves periodic detention as a way of serving a sentence of imprisonment. It is the first step—and I stress that: the first step—towards the abolition of periodic detention as a sentencing option in the territory.
Periodic detention was introduced into the territory’s sentencing framework nearly 20 years ago by a stand-alone piece of legislation, the Periodic Detention Act 1995. That act was just one outcome of the report Paying the price which followed a review of adult and juvenile justice services by the ACT Corrections Review Committee.
Periodic detention was seen at that time as a useful addition to the sentencing arsenal. It could only be imposed if, but for the option of making a periodic detention order, a person would have been sentenced to imprisonment of not less than three months but not more than 24.
It is clear from Hansard that the bill had cross-party support at that time, and it was intended as an appropriate penalty for relatively minor offenders who could serve their sentence without being taken out of the community. At that time, offenders in the ACT who were sentenced to imprisonment had to serve their sentence in New South Wales; this had a consequential impact on the family and their support networks.
At the time of its introduction, periodic detention was an innovation, but it followed in the footsteps of other jurisdictions. In 2002, the government commenced a major review of sentencing law which resulted in the introduction of the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 and the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act 2005. The sentencing act modernised sentencing law and provided a flexible sentencing framework for the courts. The sentence administration act provided a standard model
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