Media Release
Embargoed until 9 a.m. (AEST) Tuesday 18 July 2017
Half of offenders sentenced to a community correction order (CCO) breach their order, a new Sentencing Advisory Council report has found.
The Council studied the breach patterns of 7,645 offenders sentenced to a CCO in Victoria between 1 July 2012 and 30 June 2013.
Just over one-third of the group breached their CCO by committing a new offence (2,705 offenders).
Such offences were often relatively low level, including theft and dishonesty offences (committed by 44% of offenders who breached by further offending). Road safety offences were the second most common offence type (39%).
Fifteen per cent of the group (1,161 offenders) breached their CCO by failing to comply with another condition of their CCO, for example, community work or a reporting condition.
The report found nearly half of offenders who breached their CCO by further offending did so within three months of receiving their CCO (44%).
Council Chair Professor Arie Freiberg said, ‘this research reinforces the importance of early intervention.
‘To prevent reoffending, support services and programs need to start as soon as possible after offenders receive their CCO, because the first few months after sentencing are when reoffending is most likely to start,’ he said.
‘This was especially important for young offenders. Offenders aged under 25 are nearly twice as likely as older offenders to breach their CCOs by further offending’, Professor Freiberg said.
The report also found that:
- offenders given a CCO for weapons offences had the highest rate of breaching their CCO by further offending (50%), followed by those on a CCO for breaching an intervention order (40%)
- offenders with prior convictions when they received their CCO were three times more likely to breach their CCO by reoffending than offenders who had no priors
- over one-third (35%) of offenders who breached a CCO imposed in the Magistrates’ Court by further offending received a prison sentence, while just over one-quarter (27%) were allowed to remain on their CCO either as it was or with additional time or conditions.
About Community Correction Orders
The CCO is a non-custodial sentence that courts can attach a wide range of conditions to. Conditions can punish the offender (e.g. by requiring the offender to undertake unpaid community work) and/or rehabilitate the offender (e.g. by requiring the offender to participate in programs designed to address the underlying causes of their offending).
Introduced in 2012, the CCO replaced a number of community-based sentences. It has since been used by courts as an alternative to the suspended sentence of imprisonment, which was phased-out between 2011 and 2014.
