Media Release
Embargo Thursday 10 November 2011
The Sentencing Advisory Council has today released a report that responds to a government request for advice on gross violence offences.
In April 2011, the Attorney General wrote to the Council asking it to advise him on matters relating to the government’s proposal to introduce statutory minimum sentences for offences of intentionally causing serious injury and recklessly causing serious injury when committed with gross violence.
The Statutory Minimum Sentences for Gross Violence Offences Report sets out a package of recommendations that include:
- Raising the injury threshold for offences involving gross violence from serious to severe injury.
- Defining ‘severe injury’ to cover injuries of a long-term nature involving serious impairment to, or loss of, a body function, serious disfigurement, or loss of a foetus.
- Ensuring that when people aged 16 or 17 are charged with this offence the case is heard in the higher courts rather than the Children’s Court.
- Providing a non-exhaustive list of ‘special reasons’ that courts could use as guidance if they choose to impose a sentence lower than the statutory minimum in a particular case.
Professor Arie Freiberg, Chair of the Sentencing Advisory Council said, 'The government has been clear from the outset about their plans to introduce mandatory minimum sentences for gross violence offences. The question they asked the Council was not whether this policy should be implemented but rather how could it be implemented. We have confined our advice to these terms of reference and delivered a package of recommendations that address both the form and content of these offences.
'It is the Council’s belief that moving the injury threshold up from serious to severe for these types of offences would more aptly take in the type of terrible injuries implicit in the ‘gross violence’ title.
'The Council also agreed that the most appropriate way to deal with the proposal for children was to move the responsibility for such cases away from the Children’s Court so as not to compromise the operation of sentencing in that court', said Professor Freiberg.
The Statutory Minimum Sentences for Gross Violence Offences Report is available for download from the Sentencing Advisory Council website.
