Page 6005 - Week 14 - Thursday, 8 December 2011
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The bill allows the deputy chair of the Sentence Administration Board to sign a warrant for an offender’s arrest where the board decides to suspend or cancel an offender’s periodic detention. At the moment only the chair of the board can sign such a warrant. A deputy chair has the same qualifications as a chair. So a decision to sign a warrant will be taken by someone with the same degree of expertise and authority. This will result in greater efficiency as such a warrant will still be able to be signed if the chair is not able to do so or is not available.
The following amendments will provide clarity to people administering corrective services. The bill clarifies that an offender who performs periodic detention for a detention period which is two days each week is taken to have served seven days of the offender’s full-time sentence of imprisonment. This will provide clarity, for example, in circumstances where the detainee fails to attend some detention periods and the court is re-sentencing the offender and wants to take into account how much of the sentence the detainee has already served. This confirms the original intention of the law on how periodic detention is calculated.
The bill clarifies that when the Sentence Administration Board is determining whether an offender is unlikely to be able to serve the remainder of their periodic detention the board only needs to consider the offender’s health or any exceptional circumstances, not both. This ensures that, where appropriate, grounds of health alone or other exceptional circumstances alone are sufficient for determining that periodic detention is unsuitable for the particular offender. In essence, this gives effect to the original intention of the provision ensuring that people are not required to continue to serve their sentence of imprisonment by periodic detention where the detainee has become unable to serve their sentence in such a way. This amendment also brings the considerations that the board must have into line with other parts of the act.
An offender may be released on licence under chapter 13 of the Crimes (Sentencing Administration) Act 2005. The bill clarifies that corrections officers are required to report a breach of licence obligations by an offender who is serving a sentence of life imprisonment. This has been previously unclear in relation to this type of offender. The bill clarifies that a sentencing court only needs to provide a copy of a pre-sentence report to parties at least two working days before the offender is sentenced if the court itself receives the report in this time frame. Previously the court has been obliged to provide copies two days before sentencing whether or not the court has actually received the copies. This placed the court in an impossible position at times. Should any party consider it has had insufficient time to consider a report for sentencing it of course remains open to the parties to seek from the court an extension of time for preparation.
Also the bill clarifies that when the Sentence Administration Board gives a document to an offender or other person this includes both physical and oral disclosure of the information in the document. This amendment allows the board to give full effect to requirements to not disclose information in certain circumstances, ensuring that where appropriate documents remain confidential.
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