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Homicide in Victoria: Offenders, Victims and Sentencing Statistical Report Released

Today the Sentencing Advisory Council released a statistical report entitled Homicide in Victoria: Offenders, Victims and Sentencing. The report arose from the November 2004 Victorian Law Reform Commission's Defences to Homicide: Final Report. In its report, the Commission recommended the abolition of provocation as a partial defence to homicide; that the Sentencing Advisory Council establish a statistical database to monitor sentencing trends in homicide cases; and that the database should allow monitoring of sentencing trends in cases where:

a. the offender killed a person who subjected her/him to family violence
b. the offender had previously subjected the deceased to violence
c. the offender acted under provocation from the deceased
d. the offender was suffering from a mental condition at the time of the killing.

The Sentencing Advisory Council has worked closely with the Australian Institute of Criminology and the Victorian Department of Justice to make use of the Victorian data from the Institute's National Homicide Monitoring Program. This Program was established in 1989 and is the leading source of information in Australia on homicide incidents, victims and offenders. It is based on data both from police and from coronial records and includes information on all homicides occurring in each State and Territory in Australia.

The report shows how sentencing outcomes for homicide vary on the basis of characteristics of the incident, the offender and the victim.