Page 5371 - Week 12 - Thursday, 28 October 2010
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• A partial expansion of Phase Two that would limit access to restorative justice by age of offender.
(2) Deliberations by Government on what programs and projects to support are often subject to Cabinet-in-Confidence themselves or are related to matters that are subject to Cabinet-in-Confidence. It is not appropriate for the Government to make public its internal deliberations on such matters.
(3) The current workload of the Restorative Justice Unit is managed by 2.4 FTE convenors and 1 FTE convenor funded by the AFP – this equates to approximately 70 cases per convenor per annum. There is also an administrative support officer (1xAS04) and a manager (SOG B) who carries a small caseload from time to time to manage spikes in referrals.
Should the restorative justice scheme be expanded to include young adult offenders, it is estimated that an additional 3 FTE convenor positions would be required to manage the expected increase in workload at an estimated recurrent cost of $.330m.
(4) Any expansion of restorative justice into the adult arena (i.e. those aged 18 years and older) is likely to create a substantial increase in workload. For example, it is likely that numbers would still double if Phase Two was expanded to only include offenders aged 19, 20 and 21 years.
People aged 15 to 19 years are more likely to be processed by police for the commission of a crime than are members of any other population group. The next group most likely to be processed for the commission of a crime is those aged 20 to 24 years of age. In 2006–07, the offending rate for people aged 15 to 19 years was four times the rate for offenders aged more than 19 years (5,735 and 1,305 respectively per 100,000).1
The Government has considered limiting the eligibility of offences that would result in less than doubling of referrals; however, the disadvantages with this approach are that groups of offenders and victims would be arbitrarily denied access to restorative justice and the scheme would become confusing to understand and administer.
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1 AIC, Australian Crime – Facts and Figures 2008
Crime—victims
(Question No 1193)
Mr Rattenbury asked the Attorney-General, upon notice, on 23 September 2010:
(1) In relation to the annual funding provided to the Victims of Crime Coordinator since the Victims of Crime Act 1994 commenced and noting that prior to 2005-06 the total annual funding provided was not reported in the annual reports for the Victims of Crime Support Program, does the Government have records of the total amount of funding provided to the Victims of Crime Coordinator from when the Act commenced in December 1994 until the financial year 2004-05; if so, what are the total annual figures for the 11 intervening financial years; if not, why not.
(2) If the Government does not hold the records referred to in part (1), was the Coordinator funded part of a larger organisation and can the Minister indicate what
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