Page 1121 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 28 March 2017
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A NAPRO is a serious restriction on a person. However, it is subject to court discretion. While some here may attempt to blur the distinction of important legal principles, a NAPRO can clearly be distinguished from anti-consorting laws. It is the consequence of an individual sentence made by a court. Legislation specifies the crimes for which a NAPRO can be made. A judge—and it is a judge who makes the decisions—can presently make a NAPRO in relation to a specific range of serious offences, including domestic violence and serious drug offences. Today’s bill will add two crimes to the list: money laundering and serious firearms offences.
Adding these two crimes to the list is well justified. Money laundering and serious firearms offences are crimes that are often the product of criminal conspiracies. Participation in organised crime, for example, is a factor that could reasonably support a judge to make a NAPRO. In certain circumstances it will be appropriate for an offender who is convicted of a serious firearms offence or a money laundering offence to have restrictions placed on their movements and contacts.
I note for the benefit of those here that a NAPRO has recently been used in relation to a prosecution and sentencing of a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang—in fact, demonstrating the strength of the range of measures that are currently available to the justice system. There is, however, no evidence that the ACT’s NAPRO scheme, with its imposition by a court and its direct relation to an individual sentence, has been used to prevent families from being together or has had a disproportionate impact on disadvantaged people. This is an important part of our criminal sentencing regime, and while I will continue to monitor its effect, the evidence to date supports the government’s amendments today. NAPROs are an effective tool for preventing reoffending and supporting rehabilitation.
This bill also contains an expansion to the set of crimes for which an alternative verdict can be entered. An alternative verdict is a finding by a jury that a person was, although charged with a more serious crime, guilty of a lesser offence. The amendments in this bill provide alternative verdicts to aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary. These crimes are aggravated when they are carried out by two people working in concert with each other. In a prosecution for each, the underlying robbery and burglary still have to be fully proven. Aggravating factors must be proven on top of those underlying elements.
The bill provides that where the aggravated offence has been charged but the prosecution has not been able to show the aggravation element, the court is still able to find the defendant guilty of robbery or burglary. This is a common-sense provision that prevents an “all or nothing” outcome in a criminal prosecution. Where the facts support a burglary or robbery conviction in a case, that option should be available to the court.
The bill also improves legislation for managing parole orders. Parole orders go hand in hand with criminal sentencing. Section 149 of the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act 2005 provides that a parole order is cancelled where a person is convicted while on parole. The changes in this bill clarify that a parole order is not cancelled by a subsequent offence unless the relevant offence itself was committed
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