Tutorial videos

Hello and welcome to this instructional video on how to use SACStat.

My name is Paul Schollum and I am the manager of statistical analysis here at the Sentencing Advisory Council.

SACStat is the Council's online database of sentencing statistics for the Magistrates' Court, County Court and Supreme Court of Victoria.

In this video we will be looking at how to find data about crime sentenced in the Magistrates' Court.

So let's start at the SACStat homepage and click on the Magistrates' Court offences menu.

As you can see this brings up a list of offences.

Let's say you're interested in finding data about the offence of handling stolen goods.

You could scroll all the way through the list to find it or you could use the buttons at the top here to get there a bit quicker.

For example, you could click on the 'H' button and that will get you all the offences that start with that letter.

If you then click on handling stolen goods you will see all the Magistrates' Court data available for that offence.

The first thing you will see is a summary about the offence including how many were sentenced and what sentences they usually received. Below that there's a graph menu which, as you can see, is divided into charge data and case data.

The default graph here shows sentencing outcomes for all charges of the offence we selected.

So we can see there were over sixteen thousand five hundred charges sentenced and 57.6 percent received imprisonment.

You can also look at the lengths of sentences imposed. For example, if we click on imprisonment lengths it shows that 61 percent of imprisonment sentences for this offence were less than three months.

Other useful features of SACStat include these two buttons located above the graphs.

You can use the get the data file button to download an Excel file with all the numbers and percentages that are shown in the graphs.

And you can use this print button to produce a PDF document with all the graphs along with commentary summarising the data.

Thank you for watching this video on how to use Magistrates' Court data in SACStat.

We hope you found it helpful and be sure to check out our other videos which cover more useful features of SACStat.

Hello and welcome to this instructional video on how to use SACStat.

My name is Paul Schollum and I am the manager of statistical analysis here at the Sentencing Advisory Council.

SACStat is the Council's online database of sentencing statistics for the Magistrates' Court, County Court and Supreme Court of Victoria.

In this video we will be looking at offence data from the higher courts.

In SACStat, the higher courts data is the combined data from the County Court and the Supreme Court.

So let's start where we are here at the SACStat homepage and use the search function to try and find data for an offence.

As an example let's look for robbery, which I've already typed in.

And then you can see that the search brings up higher courts data for robbery.

It also shows us variations such as attempted robbery and armed robbery. And it brings up results from the Magistrates' Court as well, but we're interested in robbery in the higher courts so that's what we'll click on.

Okay so firstly let's minimise the summary so we can get straight into the data and let's look at the case data which is the second set of graphs here in the menu.

If we click on all sentencing outcomes and then click on all outcomes we can see that there are 74 cases of robbery in the last five years and we can see the most common sentences were imprisonment - on its own in 29 cases and combined with a community correction order in 24 cases.

If we were interested in how long those imprisonment sentences were we can look further down the cases menu and click on the first option for imprisonment lengths.

Notice that when you click this option the menu expands and provides the option to look at data for all cases or by specific gender or age groups.

When we look at the graph for all cases of imprisonment we can also see some summary statistics just above the graph, such as the median imprisonment term, which is just above one year.

Now this graph includes all imprisonment sentences, including those that are combined with community correction orders.

If you're interested in the links of straight sentences of imprisonment only, then click the menu option further down that says 'imprisonment lengths excludes combined orders'.

As you can see, when we remove combined orders, the prison sentences get longer with a median of two and a half years.

Looking further down the menu, there are also options to look at the lengths or amounts of other sentence types and near the bottom of the menu SACStat now includes trend data over time.

Let's have a quick look at the trend in imprisonment length data.

As you can see in the 29 cases where imprisonment was imposed without a community correction order, the average imprisonment sentence length ranged from 2.1 years to 3.3 years.

Thank you for watching this video on how to use higher courts data in SACStat. We hope you found it helpful. Be sure to check out our other videos which cover more useful features of SACStat.

Hello and welcome to this instructional video on how to use SACStat.

My name is Paul Schollum and I am the manager of statistical analysis here at the Sentencing Advisory Council.

SACStat is the Council's online database of sentencing statistics for the Magistrates' Court, County Court and Supreme Court of Victoria.

In this video we will be looking at standard sentence data from the higher courts.

In SACStat, the higher courts data is the combined data from the County Court and the Supreme Court.

Standard sentences were introduced in 2018.

They are numerical guideposts for courts when sentencing specific serious offences such as murder, rape and culpable driving causing death.

When deciding what sentence to impose on a standard sentence offence, courts are only allowed to look at other cases where that same crime was also dealt with as a standard sentence offence.

That's why in SACStat you can now specifically look at the cases and charges where standard sentences applied.

Let's take a look at sentencing data for murder in the higher courts to illustrate.

Here we are starting with all cases of murder and this graph tells us there are 107 cases involving murder in the five years to June 2021 and all of them resulted in imprisonment.

If we wanted to know how many of these cases were affected by standard sentences we can go to the very bottom of the cases menu options and select standard sentences and then all standard sentence outcomes.

This shows us that in 23 of those 107 cases we initially looked at, the standard sentence for murder applied.

One of the new features of SACStat is time series data. So we can now see which year those cases were sentenced in.

If we go to standard sentence yearly trends and then number of standard sentences by year, we can see that four of those cases were in the 2018-19 financial year, then there were 13 and then six in the subsequent years.

We can also see the lengths of imprisonment for standard sentences over time.

If we click on average standard sentences and then average standard sentence imprisonment lengths by year, we can then see that imprisonment lengths for murder as a standard sentence have ranged from about 20 years to about 30 years since standard sentences were introduced.

Thank you for watching this video on how to use standard sentence data in SACStat. We hope you found it helpful and be sure to check out our other videos which cover more useful features of SACStat.

Hello and welcome to this instructional video on how to use SACStat. My name is Paul Schollum and I am the manager of statistical analysis at the Sentencing Advisory Council.

SACStat is the Council's online database of sentencing statistics for the Magistrates' Court, County Court and Supreme Court of Victoria.

In this video we will be looking at the differences between charge data and case data.

In SACStat, a charge is a single count of a sentenced offence and a case is a collection of one or more charges that are sentenced at the one hearing.

On screen is a simple example of a few hypothetical cases to explain the difference between these.

Firstly let's count all the cases and charges.

As you can see, we have three cases and they each have one or more charges. Overall there are six charges in total.

Now let's look at specific offences to see how SACStat counts charges and cases.

Looking firstly at murder, there is one charge of murder so the charge count is simple enough.

To count cases we look at how many times this offence was the principal proven offence. Each case has one principle proven offence - this is the charge that received the most severe sentence.

Using this counting rule it is easy to see that there is one murder case. Next let's look at the offence of aggravated burglary. All three cases have at least one aggravated burglary charge. In SACStat charge data, we count all the charges of the offence, so for aggravated burglary there are four charges.

But when we count cases, we only count those cases in which aggravated burglary was the principal proven offence.

Therefore, the number of cases is two.

Lastly in this example let's look at theft. There are two charges.

But theft was not the principal proven offence in any cases so the case count is zero.

Now before we go let's quickly look at SACStat where we can see these counting rules in action.

I'll just switch over to SACStat now.

And the example offence that we're looking at is armed robbery.

And when we look at the charge data for this offence, we can see that there were 1,195 charges sentenced in the higher courts in the five-year reference period of SACStat.

When we switch to looking at cases, we can see that there are 732 cases sentenced in that same reference period.

This must mean that there are over 400 charges of armed robbery that were not the principal proven offence.

This could be because there are cases where a different offence received a more severe sentence than those armed robbery charges.

Or it can also occur when more than one charge of armed robbery is sentenced in the same case.

That concludes our video on the differences between charge and case data. We hope you found it helpful and be sure to check out our other videos which cover more useful features of SACStat.