Looking at sentenced cases in the Victorian higher courts over the five years to 30 June 2014, Guilty Pleas in the Higher Courts: Rates, Timing, and Discounts examines the proportion of cases in which a guilty plea was entered, the timing of these pleas, and associated factors (such as offender age and offence type). The study also examines compliance with section 6AAA of the Sentencing Act 1991(Vic), which requires sentencing judges (in particular circumstances) to state the sentence they would have imposed had the offender not pleaded guilty. Using the information from these 6AAA statements, the report provides Victoria’s first ever analysis of the ways in which guilty pleas changed sentences in over 7,000 higher courts cases.
Please note: the error in the key to Figure 14 in the original version of this publication has been corrected in the present version.
Authored and published by the Sentencing Advisory Council
© Copyright State of Victoria, Sentencing Advisory Council, 2015
