---

Scope for more community sanctions – judges

A paper prepared by a committee of the Judicial Council has concluded that there is scope for “some expansion” of the use of supervised, community-based sanctions as an alternative to prison.

The paper, from the Sentencing Guidelines and Information Committee (SGIC), outlines the various community-based sanctions that are available to judges, with reference to the District Court.

Its focus is mainly on supervised sanctions such as probation orders and community-service orders.

‘Social good’

“There is widespread acceptance that social good would be generally better served by less – or more parsimonious – use of imprisonment,” the committee states, citing:

• The detrimental effects of imprisonment on individuals, families and society,
• Imprisonment itself being a risk factor for future re-offending,
• The particularly higher rates of reoffending by those sentenced to short prison sentences, and
• The financial costs of imprisonment.

The paper says that community-based sanctions are being used “to a significant extent” by the District Court.

There were 8,616 referrals from the criminal courts to the Probation Service in 2022, representing 7,508 individuals.

The District Court accounted for 69% of all referrals to the Probation Service in 2022.

In the Children’s Court, almost 40% of 2,426 offences dealt with in 2023 received community-based sanctions.

‘Trust and confidence’

The committee says that judges have considerable flexibility on sentencing, within certain parameters.

It warns, however: “It is critical that the available range of community-based sanctions have the trust and confidence of the judiciary, in terms of how the sanctions are managed and administered, and provided that the Probation Service is resourced to deliver them consistently across the country”.

The paper looks specifically at community-based sanctions under domestic-violence legislation, and calls for “an increased and concerted effort” to provide better data on such offences from a sentencing perspective.

“Analysis of relevant statistics and tracking the application of specific penalties for such offending requires more finely tuned focus,” it states, citing long-standing concerns about the tracking of responses of criminal-justice bodies to such offences.