Page 3902 - Week 10 - Thursday, 20 September 2018
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term or, in some cases, that a non-parole period be set so that the offender may serve part of the remaining term in the community on parole. The circumstances in which a non-parole period may be set have been designed to take into account both the existing parole regime and the existing regime for the Sentence Administration Board cancelling an intensive correction order. Parole is an important sentencing mechanism to allow offenders to integrate into the community under the supervision and support of ACT Corrective Services.
The bill will also make a fourth set of amendments to strengthen the notification arrangements if the court cancels an intensive correction order on further offending. These amendments will ensure the offender and the prison authorities have all the information they need about the remaining term of imprisonment to be served in full-time detention, and any non-parole period set by the cancelling court.
Finally, the bill will clarify that a court may request ACT Corrective Services to prepare an assessment of an offender’s suitability for an intensive correction order at a relatively early stage after the offender has pleaded or been found guilty. In making this clarification the bill also supports clarity in the functions of the ACT Corrective Services officers performing these assessments, aligned with their existing functions in preparing pre-sentence reports. These clarifications to the intensive correction order scheme reflect the government’s commitment to continuously monitor and improve sentencing administration, to ensure that sentencing law and practice are operating as intended.
The bill also improves the administration of community service work orders, which are an important option available to ACT sentencing courts. Under the sentencing act, both good behaviour orders and intensive correction orders can contain a condition that the offender perform a certain amount of community service work. Most Australian jurisdictions make specific provision for an offender to be able to accumulate community service work hours through participation in therapeutic or educational programs. The bill aims to bring the ACT broadly into line with other Australian jurisdictions in this respect.
The purpose of this amendment is to increase completion rates for orders including community service work, and to support people with high needs who are subject to the orders. Only the time spent at an educational or therapeutic activity that an offender has been directed to attend by Corrective Services will count towards the offender’s community service work obligation. The total proportion of therapeutic or educational activities that may be counted towards completing a community service work obligation will be capped at 25 per cent.
Finally, the bill will make two minor technical amendments. It will remove a redundant signpost definition from the Crimes Act 1900 that was overlooked when amendments were made to end the periodic detention regime in the ACT.
It will also update the definition of “automatic disqualification provision” in section 61A of the Road Transport (General) Act 1999. That definition, as its name suggests, lists offences that are “automatic disqualification provisions” for the purposes of the act. The bill will amend the definition to include a reference to the existing offence in
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