Sentencing Snapshot - The Victorian Criminal Justice System Released
On Wednesday 28 February 2007, the Sentencing Advisory Council released a Sentencing Snapshot that examines the Victorian Criminal Justice System during 2004/05.
This report examines attrition rates for the Victorian criminal justice system. It places the outcomes from each stage of the justice system in a broader context by relating information back to the total number of people who came into contact with the Victorian criminal justice system. The report describes how people were dealt with by the formal institutions of the system: the police, courts and corrections.
The report shows that the Victorian criminal justice system looks very similar to those in other jurisdictions: that, as expected, there is substantial filtering of the vast numbers of people who come to the attention of police, with only a small number of the most serious offenders being sentenced to correctional or juvenile detention supervision.
Of the 155,008 alleged offenders who came into contact with the police in 2004/05, 69% proceeded to court and 56% were sentenced (8% receiving custodial sentences and 47% receiving non-custodial sentences). At any one time during 2004/05, around 2% (3,095) of people dealt with by police were imprisoned.