2017-03-07
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) — I also would like to speak on the Victorian Auditor-General's Office report Managing Community Correction Orders, released last month. This is a very timely report on a vital part of the corrections system. I do have a different take on the report from that of the previous speaker, Mr Dalla-Riva. The Victorian Auditor-General's Office report sets out by saying:
A community correction order (CCO) is a sentence imposed by a court —
as an alternative to imprisonment —
that allows offenders to complete their sentences in a community setting. Offenders on CCOs may have to comply with specific conditions imposed by the courts, such as … drug or alcohol treatment, and significant restrictions such as curfews and judicial monitoring.
People on CCOs have the opportunity to maintain and improve their social and economic support networks in a community setting while they make amends for their offences and undergo any court-ordered rehabilitation. Offenders who receive CCOs also tend to have much lower rates of reoffending. This is in part expected, as many of those on CCOs are from a relatively low-risk cohort.
Data from Corrections Victoria (CV), which is part of the Department of Justice and Regulation and is responsible for directing, managing and operating the correctional system, reports that almost 25 per cent of offenders who have been on CCOs returned to corrective services in 2014–15, which compares favourably to prisoners, 53.7 per cent of whom returned to prison or community corrections. Also the cost to manage someone on a CCO was $27.55 per day, or just over $10 000 per year, which is much lower than the $360.91 per day, or more than $131 700 per year, that it costs to manage a person in prison.
The previous speaker, Mr Dalla-Riva, talked about the increase in the number of CCOs. This report says that since 2012 there have been a number of changes to legislation and sentencing practices, which I have mentioned before, that have led to this increase in CCOs, such as the abolition of suspended sentences. That was done by the previous government, and it has led to a rise in the use of CCOs by the courts as an alternative, so you would expect a rise in the number of CCOs. I call on the current government to reintroduce suspended sentences because they have an important role to play in the justice, youth and corrections system.
The maximum period of imprisonment was extended from three months to two years when combined with a CCO, but that has recently been reduced to one year. Also, CCOs have become a sentencing option for more serious crimes, although, again, recent changes have limited their use for very serious crimes. All these changes collectively have triggered an increase in the number of offenders on CCOs, almost doubling from 5871 in 2013 to 11 730 in 2016. These things are all expected.
There is not enough time in the 5 minutes that I have to speak about the large number of findings that the Auditor-General has made, but they address things like more high-risk offenders, recruitment and training, information management systems, contingency planning, risk assessment of offenders, support programs and services, managing breaches of CCOs, better practice in managing offenders, the monitoring and reporting framework, and evaluation activities. Suffice it to say there have been a large number of people on CCOs, but there are still not enough corrections staff to supervise CCOs properly.
The workload is very large and the number of offenders that staff have to supervise is still too high, even though the report points to more resources having been put in by the government and more staff having been recruited. But in terms of the staff, CV has been addressing historical understaffing in this area, exacerbated by the recent growth in case loads, and has recorded a high staff turnover for more than a decade, not just under this government but under previous governments.
There is not a lot of time to cover this report. It is a very good report, and I do commend it to the Parliament. Suffice it to say that it does report on a review that has been conducted by CV into CCOs and that certainly CV is working to address these issues but still has quite a lot of challenges to meet in that regard.