By Paul McGorrery and Felicity Stewart

Adjourned undertakings perform a critical role in the Victorian criminal justice system. They are a low-end community order that requires the offender to be of good behaviour for a certain period of time, and they may also require the offender to comply with certain additional conditions, such as making a charitable donation or participating in a rehabilitation program. They are primarily designed to provide a response to less serious offending, to first-time offenders, to vulnerable offenders or even to serious offending if there are extraordinary circumstances. Because of this broad scope, adjourned undertakings are highly prevalent. In 2019 alone, there were over 17,000 adjourned undertakings imposed, mostly in the Magistrates’ Court, making up 18% of all sentencing outcomes in adult courts that year. Yet despite the importance and prevalence of adjourned undertakings, this project has been the first detailed examination of their use since their introduction in 1985. In that context, this report follows the consultation paper we published in August 2022 and presents 26 recommendations for reforms to adjourned undertakings and related orders. Those recommendations are a product of extensive data analysis, legal research and consultation over the last two years. Our overarching aim in making those recommendations is to refine a sentencing order that is already held in high regard by those who work in Victoria’s criminal justice system. Adjourned undertakings are a highly flexible and useful order, and we do not want to fix what isn’t broken or cause unintended consequences. With that in mind, we have grouped our recommendations according to certain themes.

Melbourne: The Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2023. 102p.

By Felicity Stewart, Paul McGorrery

Deferring (or postponing) sentencing for a short time, up to 12 months, is one of the ways that courts can achieve the various purposes of sentencing in Victoria (for example, community protection and rehabilitation) and ensure that judicial officers have all the information they need in deciding an appropriate sentence in a case.

Introduced in the adult criminal jurisdiction in 2002, sentence deferral has evolved into a vital, but potentially under-utilised, part of the Victorian sentencing landscape. Over the last two years, those who work in the criminal justice system have told us that sentence deferral can be a highly effective therapeutic tool. Sentence deferral can support complex and vulnerable offenders in their rehabilitation and can protect the community in the long-term by allowing offenders to participate in programs that reduce their risk of reoffending. In some cases, a person’s progress during the deferral period can make the difference between receiving a prison sentence and receiving a community order.

In this report, the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council makes 10 recommendations for reform that have been informed by their research, data analysis and consultation. In developing these recommendations, they were mindful not to ‘fix what isn’t broken’, in particular, not to disrupt the aspects of sentence deferral that make it work well, especially its flexibility and lack of formality. The Council has only made recommendations where there was strong evidence for change.

Melbourne: The Sentencing Advisory Council, 2024. 115p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

EDITED BY Hyman Gross and Andrew von Hirsch

Sentencing, edited by Hyman Gross and Andrew von Hirsch, is a comprehensive collection of essays exploring various aspects of sentencing practices. This edited volume delves into the complexities of sentencing theory, policy, and reform, offering diverse perspectives from leading experts in the field. Whether you are a legal scholar, practitioner, or student, this book provides valuable insights into the challenges and debates surrounding sentencing in modern criminal justice systems.

New York / Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1981. 401p.

By Marie Manikis and Nicholas Doiron

The continuous perpetration of unjustified harms by the carceral state through its use of solitary confinement justifies the creation of a novel process of automatic sentence review. This process is necessary to account for such state-perpetrated harms and communicate censure more accurately. This article proposes the use of a communicative theory of punishment developed in sentencing to characterise and account for the state’s wrongdoing and harms in the context of a sentence that involves solitary confinement. Specifically, it outlines a justification for an automatic review process of the offender’s carceral sentence based on an expanded and relational understanding of censure developed in the literature and proposes a two-step process to implement this review.

(2024) 26:1 Punishment & Society 72-90.