Media Release
Embargoed until 12.00 a.m. (AEST) Thursday 10 September 2015
Analysis released today shows Victorian courts’ use of community correction orders (CCOs) was rising steadily even before the December 2014 guideline judgment that spelled out the order’s potential for more widespread use.
The Sentencing Advisory Council’s report Community Correction Orders: Second Monitoring Report (Pre-Guideline Judgment) examined 25,000 CCOs imposed by Victoria’s adult courts between 2012 and 2014.
As a percentage of all sentences imposed in the higher courts (County and Supreme Court), CCOs rose from 17.5% in the March quarter of 2012 to 24.6% in the December quarter of 2014. Over the same period, use of CCOs in the Magistrates’ Court increased from 7.2% to 10.6%.
The increase in use of CCOs was due, at least in part, to the phase-out of suspended sentences of imprisonment. The rate at which suspended sentences were imposed declined from 20.2% to 6.3% in the higher courts, and from 6.4% to 3.7% in the Magistrates’ Court.
The typical duration of CCOs was steady – the median (mid-point average) was 12 months in the Magistrates’ Court and 24 months in the higher courts.
The research revealed that, in the study period, very few CCOs included new conditions such as curfews or alcohol exclusion. The most common conditions imposed were assessment and treatment (79.6% of CCOs in the Magistrates’ Court) and unpaid community work (72.9%). However, the imposition of supervision as a CCO condition actually dropped from 50.9% of cases to 31.7% over the period.
Legislative changes made in September 2014 encouraged the courts to impose a CCO in cases where a suspended sentence would have previously been imposed. In addition, the maximum term of imprisonment that could be combined with a CCO was increased from three months to two years. In the September and December quarters of 2014, the number of CCOs that were combined with a term of imprisonment tripled in the higher courts and increased by two-thirds in the Magistrates’ Court.
'Courts have been using CCOs in place of the now discontinued suspended sentences', said Emeritus Professor Arie Freiberg, Chair of the Sentencing Advisory Council. 'Offenders who would previously have been released without supervision are now being assessed and treated, and giving back through unpaid community work.
'Even before the Court of Appeal ruled in Boulton that CCOs can replace imprisonment for some serious offences, courts had been using CCOs to fulfil a variety of sentencing roles and to achieve a variety of sentencing purposes, from rehabilitation to deterrence and denunciation', he said.
The Council will continue to monitor and report on the use of CCOs.
