A rogue Corrective Services officer who faked signatures to submit unvetted assessments of criminals may have been rewarded with bonus fees for his forgeries under a now dumped workload system.
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And there is evidence that Leslie Owen Brien, 54, simply copied old material and used shortcuts to produce the forged reports, which were then used by ACT courts to decide the fate of 13 criminals.
Brien is currently before the ACT Magistrates Court, where he has pleaded guilty to 13 charges of forgery.
The former Corrective Services worker forged the signatures of supervisors mainly on pre-sentence reports, which are designed to help judges and magistrates better understand the background, state of mind, and future prospects of the offender they are about to sentence.
In one case, Brien faked a signature on a pre-sentence report for Scott Alexander McDougall, one of the ACT's most sinister criminals.
The forged report was then used in the sentencing of McDougall for the double murder of two people he killed with a meat cleaver.
Brien's report was referenced by the ACT Supreme Court as it sentenced McDougall to two life sentences in 2011.
It can now be revealed that, in some cases, Brien simply copied material from older reports, or updated past reports about an offender without changing the detail.
He was also potentially earning bonus fees for the 13 reports he faked the signatures on.
At the time, ACT Corrective Services had a workload system in place which restricted each author to writing a certain number of reports each.
It is understood those limits did not cover the entire workload, meaning some reports were left outstanding.
Authors like Brien were then paid bonus fees to complete the extra work outside of normal business hours.
Corrections Minister Shane Rattenbury said it was not known whether Brien received the bonus fees for the reports, or how much extra he may have been paid.
But Mr Rattenbury said the workload system has since been dumped, and that changes were made as soon as Brien's forgeries were discovered.
"All reports are now allocated to staff as part of normal workload management and there have been improvements to work systems and administrative support in order to assist officers to meet workload demands," he said.
"As soon as this issue was identified, ACTCS senior management took disciplinary action and the matter was reported to the police.
"ACTCS has since improved the process for undertaking pre-sentence and pre-release reports, including enhanced mentoring for officers in the development of reports and the weekly recording of all reports for review by team leaders."
Brien's forgeries were discovered when a co-worker expressed surprise about a decision of the Sentence Administration Board to approve parole for a high-risk prisoner.
The co-worker asked a supervisor, and the pre-release report was then checked.
The supervisor found, to her surprise, that her name and signature had been used to approve the report.
She alerted superiors and police were called. The board was alerted, and they then reversed their decision to give the prisoner parole.
Brien later encountered the team leader in an office, saying:
"I owe you an apology. I was really stuck for getting a report vetted and I signed it in your name.
"Will you accept my apology?"
Brien resigned soon after.
He will reappear in the ACT Magistrates Court in February.
