Page 3901 - Week 10 - Thursday, 20 September 2018
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Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act 2005, and this bill proposes amendments to both acts.
The core of the scheme is the intensive correction order sentence. It is a sentence of last resort for offenders who would otherwise serve their sentence in full-time detention at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. The ultimate goal of the intensive correction order is to support offenders to live crime-free, productive lives in the community, by supervising their behaviour in the community rather than in an institutional prison context. The integrity of this intensive community supervision relies on a robust enforcement framework of swift, certain and fair sanctions for non-compliance.
The bill proposes amendments to clarify the operation of this enforcement and compliance framework. In this respect the bill will make five sets of changes, which resolve issues that have been raised recently by stakeholders.
First, the bill will amend the consequences that flow from some arrest warrants that are issued in the context of the intensive correction order scheme. The amendment will ensure that where the warrants are issued for similar reasons the same consequences flow, regardless of whether the warrant is issued by the Sentence Administration Board or a judge or magistrate.
In particular, the amendment will mean that offenders who fail to appear before the Sentence Administration Board to answer an allegation that they have breached their intensive correction order or who are avoiding service of a notice to appear cannot obtain a benefit of their sentence continuing to run while they are at large. This will align with the existing consequences that follow when a judge or magistrate issues a warrant on information that an offender has breached or will breach their intensive correction order. By aligning these consequences, the amendment will reduce the risk of similar cases resulting in different outcomes depending on whether the warrant is issued by a judge or magistrate or the Sentence Administration Board.
Secondly, the bill will ensure that the consequences of such a warrant being issued do not have an unfair impact on offenders who are detained under the Mental Health Act 2015 or who are otherwise in custody.
Thirdly, the bill will resolve some ambiguities about what orders the Supreme Court should make if an intensive correction order is cancelled because the offender has committed a further offence punishable by imprisonment. In those circumstances the court must cancel the intensive correction order unless it is not in the interests of justice to do so. The Supreme Court identified in the decision of the Queen and XH (2017) that there are some ambiguities in the options available to the court that cancels the intensive correction order to deal with the remaining term of imprisonment.
The bill clarifies that if an intensive correction order is cancelled because of further offending, the offender will serve either a whole or a part of the remaining term in full-time detention. This will be achieved by giving the court that cancels the intensive correction order the power to order that the offender serve the full remaining
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