2017-10-19
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) (16:45:31) — I am pleased to rise this afternoon to speak on the Serious Sex Offenders (Detention and Supervision) Amendment (Governance) Bill 2017. This bill implements, I think, 14 recommendations of the Harper review which relate to the oversight of the Serious Sex Offenders (Detention and Supervision) Act 2009 (SSODSA) and the governance models under that act. It establishes the Post Sentence Authority (PSA) and provides it with the functions and powers currently held by the Adult Parole Board of Victoria and its detention and supervision order (DSO) division. Therefore it abolishes the DSO division of the adult parole board because all of its functions will be subsumed in the new PSA.
The bill provides for the coordination of services, including by multi-agency panels, to eligible offenders who are the subject of an application for a supervision order or detention order or are the subject of a supervision order or an interim supervision order. The bill provides for the sharing of information between relevant departments and for the transfer of summary offences related to a breach of a supervision order to the County Court or to the Supreme Court and makes consequential amendments to those acts and other acts.
The bill implements recommendations, in whole or in part, of the Harper review which specifically apply to the establishment of the Post Sentence Authority — which was referred to as the public protection authority in the Harper review — its powers, the cohort of offenders who come under its authority, the streamlining of intervention and management plans, the simplification of conditions and enabling the authority to respond to breaches of supervision orders. The new authority will take over from the detention and supervision order division, as I said, of the adult parole board. The Harper review did note that the adult parole board had discharged its functions under SSODSA extremely well, but the reforms in this bill will enable the adult parole board to solely focus on its critical role in administering the parole system in Victoria.
The PSA will be a body corporate under new section 192C, capable of suing and being sued. It will be governed by a board of up to 10 members, led by a chairperson and made up of retired judicial officers, legal practitioners and community representatives to ensure diversity of views, similar to the adult parole board. Members will be appointed by the Governor in Council on the recommendation of the minister. To enable the authority to respond quickly and effectively in managing offenders subject to post-sentence orders, the bill provides the chairperson with flexibility to determine how and when meetings should be held. The Department of Justice and Regulation will provide secretariat support to the PSA. The bill requires the secretary to provide employees and any other assistance necessary to support the authority to carry out its functions. The bill empowers the authority to engage independent contractors and agents to assist it to perform its functions as well.
The existing functions that the bill transfers to the authority include the responsibility to review and monitor the progress of offenders on supervision, detention and interim orders; to monitor compliance with and administer the conditions of supervision orders and interim supervision orders; to give directions and instructions to an offender in accordance with any authorisation given to the authority under an order; and to make recommendations to the secretary in relation to applications to a court for the review of conditions of supervision orders and interim supervision orders.
I think it is worth just going over what we are talking about here. Supervision orders provide for the post-sentence supervision of serious sex offenders who continue to pose an unacceptable risk of committing a relevant offence if the order is not made and the offender is in the community. They can be determined by either the County Court or the Supreme Court for up to 15 years and can be renewed for a period of up to 15 years as well. They need to be reviewed every three years or at a shorter time if required.
Detention orders require the continued detention of an offender or a prisoner of those serious sex offences who still pose an unacceptable risk if the offender was to remain in the community. These are determined by the Supreme Court and can be made for up to three years, and must be reviewed by the court annually. This is what the new Post Sentence Authority will be overseeing.
The recommendations that we are talking about are from the Harper review, which is the review that the Minister for Corrections commissioned in 2015 after the tragic murder of Masa Vukotic by Sean Price. The minister appointed a panel consisting of the Honourable David Harper, AM, Professor Paul Mullen and Professor Bernadette McSherry to conduct a review of the management of offenders who are described in the terms of reference as 'complex adult victim sex offenders', and who are subject to the SSODSA.
These offenders are considered complex because they have a complex offending profile; by presenting a risk of violent offending in addition to the risk of sexual offending; by reason of their personal issues and needs, including one or more of mental health issues, personality traits, behavioural issues, cognitive impairment and substance misuse; and by being difficult to treat and manage.
The government has accepted all the 35 recommendations of the Harper review but to date has only completed seven of them. It has, however, committed to implement the rest of them as soon as possible. We have before us now this bill, which goes to the government's oversight of SSODSA. This is a good thing, and the Greens are supporting the provisions of this bill.
It is worth noting that the Harper review did warn against piecemeal approaches to implementing the recommendations, and this is what we are seeing. We have already seen some being implemented in 2016 with the previous bill, and we now have this bill and are looking forward to further bills. I think it would be desirable that the next bill be the one that represents the remaining recommendations so we just do not have a piecemeal approach, which was certainly recommended against by review.
The review also recommended that there be an evaluation or review clause put into the legislation. In the previous bill last year I moved an amendment to that effect, but it was not accepted. I am not doing it for this bill. With the next bill I will try it again, but I would encourage the government to actually do that because it was one of the recommendations of the review that that happen.
There are other points that can be made in the context of what we are talking about today. The Harper review also recommended expanding the orders to include people in prison for serious violent offences who present an unacceptable risk of harm to the community, which is a reform that is not yet implemented and one that I was advocating for years prior to the Harper review. It is a recommendation of the Harper review, and it is something that I have been advocating for for quite some time — that serious violent offenders be included in this type of regime.
The other recommendation that has not been taken up, which is a very important one, is that of making sure that serious sex offenders — and serious violent offenders, I would say, too — should be receiving early intervention while they are in prison to deal with issues they have. I think the Harper review recommended that at least three years before the person may be eligible to be released intensive intervention programs are undertaken by that person. This is partly to assist that person to not go on to post-sentence detention or supervision, but also in the interests of community safety. So far this recommendation has not been implemented either.
I have raised before in debate on these issues to do with corrections and sentencing that there are far too many people in the corrections system who are not receiving the programs — be they mental health programs, drug and alcohol programs or educational programs — that they should be receiving while they are incarcerated to assist them to ready themselves for release into the community, to give them the best chance of not being repeat offenders, to lower the recidivism rate and to try and rehabilitate as many offenders as we can. The best way to keep the community safe is to use the time when people are sentenced to prison to make sure they undertake the programs and assistance they need to assist them when they are released and, as I say, to keep the community safer.
So while we are looking at this particular bill, which looks at the establishment of the Post Sentence Authority and oversight of the SSODSA regime, we also need to keep in mind what is happening in prisons with regard to people when they are already in them.
There is quite a lot of detail in terms of the powers of the authority, which I will not go through, but there are a couple of other points to note about it. To provide a balance and ensure the scheme is non-punitive SSODSA already contains a range of procedural safeguards that the authority will need to observe when making its decisions, such as notifying an offender of any directions or instructions that it gives; that the offender may make submissions within 21 days of making a notice; that the offender is entitled to be heard and may inspect documents; and that the authority must take into account the offender's submissions and give reasons for the decisions it makes.
An important part of this bill is that the Harper review found that effective assessment, treatment and supervision of complex offenders requires effective coordination between the agencies involved in their management and that responsibility for providing services that will reduce reoffending and protect the community lies not only with the justice system but also with the mental health, disability and social services systems. They all need more active involvement and to work more closely together.
The review recommended the establishment of multi-agency panels to coordinate services delivered to offenders subject to post-sentence orders. The review envisaged that the panels would include government agencies, such as the Department of Justice and Regulation, the Department of Health and Human Services and Victoria Police, and relevant non-government agencies.
To implement those recommendations the bill imposes obligations on responsible agencies, being the departments and the Chief Commissioner of Police, and any prescribed person or body and requires them to act in accordance with a principle of shared responsibility by providing reasonable assistance and support to each other, sharing information and taking steps to resolve any issues in the delivery of services to offenders. There is quite a lot more detail with regard to the multi-agency panel et cetera, but suffice it to say it is very good to see that come into place under this bill.
In order to promote transparency and accountability in the administration of the post-sentence scheme the FOI act will apply to documents of authority. However, under clause 15, which inserts section 192B, the bill contains a clear list of types of information that are not appropriate to be publicly released. This includes information that relates to decisions made in relation to the management of an individual offender or the monitoring of administration of a particular court order or information that relates to a victim or the victims of an offender, including any victim submission made under the order.
I think that covers the main provisions of the bill, which the Greens are supportive of. As I said, we would like to see the other recommendations of the Harper review implemented as soon as possible so that there is a full regime in place working to address what Ms Symes and I have said on many occasions is one of the most difficult, complicated areas that we need to deal with in the justice and corrections system. It is not an easy issue to deal with, and it is good to see everybody pretty well on the same page with regard to these difficult issues.
If I could just take a minute to speak to the amendments circulated by Mr O'Donohue, I will indicate that the Greens will not be supporting Mr O'Donohue's amendment to exempt the Post Sentence Authority from the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. I am aware, as I am sure Mr O'Donohue knows, that the adult parole board is exempt, but I think the issue with the Post Sentence Authority is slightly different because particularly to detain someone post-sentence is a very serious matter in terms of justice. It has always been the case that a person does a crime, they are sentenced to a period in prison, they finish their sentence and hopefully they will not offend again. So to actually detain someone after they have finished their sentence is a serious thing to do. That is why very few people are actually detained post-sentence.
Even the supervision orders which serious sex offenders may be subject to under the act can be quite limiting on the activities of that person. These are all post-sentence, so it is a serious matter, even though, of course, they are there because the persons they apply to are serious offenders and have been deemed to be at a high risk of reoffending and reoffending with serious offences. It is different to the adult parole board, and we believe that the charter should apply to the Post Sentence Authority.
We will not support the amendment which Mr O'Donohue has circulated with regard to adding a new section E into clause 16 such that at least two members of the authority be victims of crime or representatives of victims of crime. The bill already allows for community representation on the PSA, as it does on the adult parole board — and there are community representatives on the adult parole board — and there are other avenues for victims of crime to be recognised through the justice system. The way that it is set out at the moment does not preclude the happening; it just does not mandate that happening.
However, with the other sets of amendments that Mr O'Donohue has put forward, such that the chair and deputy chair of the Post Sentence Authority be judicial officers or former judicial officers, I have already flagged to the government that I am quite open to that amendment. I have heard from the government their reasons for not wanting to go down that path, although I have to say that so far I am not all that persuaded by them.
The chair of the adult parole board is a judge of the Supreme Court. The issues that are being dealt with here are serious issues, and I think they need someone with a lot of experience, not just the experience of having been a practising lawyer for five years. In the way the bill is written it does not even require that practising lawyer to be a lawyer in the criminal system. It could be a solicitor. I am not sure that someone who has been a practising lawyer — and I understand that that is the minimum requirement, and of course I understand that it may turn out to be a person who has been a practising lawyer for 20 years — is the same as being a judge or a judicial officer and a judicial officer of a higher court who has actually dealt with these issues as a judge. I think, the same as with the adult parole board, when you are dealing with post-sentence offenders who are being detained or supervised post-sentence that you need someone chairing this authority with a great deal of experience.
Even Ms Symes when she was talking about it in her contribution basically said, 'Yes, the adult parole board — the chair is a judicial officer'. I am still really struggling to follow the logic as to why the chair of this authority would not be a judicial officer as well. I thank the staff of the minister for running their reasons by me, but I am still inclined to think that it would be a good thing that the chair was a judicial officer. No doubt we will prosecute this further in the committee stage. With those remarks, the Greens will support the bill.