Media Release
Embargoed until 01:00 AM AEDT Thursday 16 October 2014
The Sentencing Advisory Council today released findings of an innovative analysis of the new community correction orders (CCOs) imposed by Victorian higher courts in the 18 months to June 2013. It is the first Council report, and one of the few reports in Australia, to examine sentencing outcomes using both quantitative and qualitative analyses of judges’ sentencing remarks.
The analysis sought to identify case variables influencing:
- when CCOs were imposed (compared to a short period of imprisonment);
- what lengths of CCOs were imposed; and
- what conditions were attached to the CCOs.
The analysis found:
- most CCOs imposed by the higher courts were of similar duration to the old community-based orders (85 per cent of CCOs were two years or less);
- while most case variables did not predict if a CCO or a short term of imprisonment would be imposed, offenders who were employed and/or involved in an educational program had an increased likelihood of receiving a CCO;
- an offender’s previous offending and the seriousness of the current offending were consistently associated with the imposition of imprisonment rather than a CCO;
- courts generally provided little explanation of the sentencing principles applied, or the purposes intended, when imposing a long CCO (over two years in length). When such comments were made, a long CCO was associated with sentencing parity, rehabilitation of the offender, and/or the court’s decision to make the sentence more onerous; and
- it is difficult to predict which case variables influence a court’s choice of conditions attached to a CCO. In their sentencing remarks, judges rarely commented on the purposes intended by their choice of CCO conditions.
Chair of the Sentencing Advisory Council, Emeritus Professor Arie Freiberg, said, 'This is the third in a series of reports published by the Council on community orders in Victoria that sheds light on their operation. These orders have been the subject of continuing legislative and judicial attention over recent months.
'The innovative methodology used in this research allowed examination of both the subjective and the objective variables that interact in this complex process. Given the CCO is a new and different form of sanction, further research will be needed to gain a more complete understanding of what is influencing sentencing behaviour.'
The full report, Community Correction Orders in the Higher Courts: Imposition, Duration, and Conditions, is available to view and download from the Council’s website.
