Offenders to serve their full sentence

27/6/03
The bizarre practice of automatically deleting one third of an offender's prison term the minute they are sentenced is set to end after legislation to radically overhaul Western Australian sentencing laws passed through State Parliament last night.
Attorney General Jim McGinty said the change - which would take effect in August - would mean offenders were either in jail or on parole for the entire sentence imposed by the court.
A new simplified formula would guarantee all spent at least half their court-imposed sentence in prison before they could be considered for parole. Offenders not made eligible for parole would spend their entire sentence in prison.
Mr McGinty said the changes would bring about 'truth in sentencing' so that the public, victims and offenders clearly understood the real effect of a sentence and how long a person would be in jail.
He said the courts would be required to adjust their sentencing under the new laws to ensure offenders spent the same amount of time in prison as they would under the present system. No-one would spend less time in jail.
"Tougher penalties are helping create a safer community," Mr McGinty said.
Mr McGinty said it was farcical to have one third of a court sentence simply disappear through automatic remission.
"There is then a thoroughly confusing formula for determining how much of the remaining two thirds of the sentence will be spent in prison, which makes it difficult for most people to understand what the sentence means," he said.
At present, people sentenced to:

• up to 12 months usually serve two thirds of the sentence in prison;
• up to six years have one third remitted, one third in prison and one third on parole; and
• more than six years serve two thirds, less two years, in prison and two years on parole, with the final third remitted.

• abolish sentences of six months or less so that minor offenders were diverted to doing real work in the community, rather than sitting around in jail achieving nothing.
• provide greater capacity for the courts to refuse eligibility for parole, particularly for repeat offenders and those who offended while on parole;
• allow courts to adjourn sentencing for up to 12 months and order an offender to undertake treatment or counselling, do community work and undergo restrictions such as supervision or curfews; and
• expand the range of sentencing options for traffic offences to include community-based orders. In 2000-01, traffic offences accounted for 23 per cent of all prison sentences.