Page 4690 - Week 12 - Thursday, 1 November 2018
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Secondly, the bill ensures that similar consequences for an offender flow from the issuing of a warrant, regardless of whether the warrant is issued by a court or the Sentence Administration Board. When a warrant is issued for an offender, the offender is not considered to be serving their intensive correction order while the warrant is in effect.
Intensive correction orders, as the name connotes, are designed to provide for intensive contact between the offender and their community corrections officer. If an offender has ceased all contact to the point where a warrant is needed to ascertain their whereabouts, they are no longer engaging in intensive contact with ACT Corrective Services. As such, this period is not counted towards completion of the offender’s sentence. In order to ensure fairness, this mechanism does not apply where an offender is already in custody or is being detained under the Mental Health Act 2015.
The result of this amendment is that for some offenders their sentence imposed by the court may not finish when originally anticipated. This could limit the right to liberty and security of a person protected by section 18 of the Human Rights Act. It is important to note that while a sentence may take longer for an offender to complete, the sentence itself has not been extended. The amendment simply requires that the offender spend as much time engaging in intensive correction as originally ordered by the sentencing court. As noted by the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety, warrants issued by the Sentence Administration Board must be issued by a judicial member of the board. These warrants are issued when an offender has not appeared before the board as required.
Finally, the bill clarifies the circumstances in which the court is entitled to order an intensive correction order assessment report and consolidates the procedural provisions within the Crimes (Sentencing) Act and the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act to provide parity between intensive correction assessments and pre-sentence reports. A full review of the intensive correction order provisions is scheduled for 2019 and will evaluate the sentencing option fully.
As I mentioned upon presentation of this bill to the Assembly, the bill also makes minor technical corrections to the definition of “automatic disqualification provision” in the Road Transport (General) Act 1999 and “lawful custody” in the Crimes Act 1900.
This bill continues the government’s commitment to improving the effectiveness of the ACT’s justice system. The amendments in the Sentencing Legislation Amendment Bill make important and sensible changes to clarify the operation of intensive correction orders and to increase the effectiveness of the community service work scheme. The bill ensures sentencing in the ACT functions effectively and fairly and delivers strong outcomes for the ACT community. I thank Mrs Jones for her comments, and I commend the bill to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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