NCJ Number
166956
Date Published
1995
Length
44 pages
Annotation
This essay evaluates the impact of changes in sentencing law and practice in Victoria, Australia, by focusing on innovative features of sentencing reform and sentencing structures.
Abstract
Victoria's Sentencing Act of 1991 has several innovative features, such as governing principles and provisions on judicial guidance, a maximum penalty structure, sanction hierarchies, concepts of guilt and conviction, statutory sentencing discounts, and intermediate sanctions. The act is structurally significant because it represents the culmination of a 10-year process of consolidating all major sentencing provisions in one law, is intended to promote consistency of approach in offender sentencing, and recognizes comprehensive qualitative and quantitative information is needed about the range of sentences imposed in similar cases. The act reflects the views that the entry of a conviction on a person's record is a matter of fundamental importance in the criminal justice system and that a conviction signifies forfeiture of legal rights, diminution of social status, and a range of potentially detrimental collateral consequences. The act highlights the fact of conviction as part of the sentencing process and clearly identifies the fundamental concepts of guilt, conviction, and sentence as basic building blocks in the structure of sentencing. The Victorian Sentencing Committee has devoted considerable attention to the question of statutory maximum penalties and has developed a penalty scale, sanction hierarchies, and intermediate sanctions. The future of sentencing structures in Victoria is considered, and effects of sentencing changes on prison populations are discussed. 166 footnotes, 7 tables, and 6 figures