Attorney General Shane Rattenbury has commissioned a study by the Justice and Community Safety directorate around how bail is constructed in legislation and whether any recent cases in court have thrown up question marks as to whether those bail laws need refinement.
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His instruction comes after a strident appeal from the head of the Australian Federal Police Association to review bail and parole outcomes, with association president Alex Caruana concerned that the current outcomes are putting frontline police and the community at risk.
In a media statement issued on Wednesday regarding an incident in which a 17-year-old girl who stole a Hyundai on Tuesday rammed a police car and allegedly bit an officer, ACT police said they had recorded 27 incidents since July last year in which its vehicles had been deliberately rammed by offenders.
In its strongest attack yet, the police association this week described the territory's sentencing and bail processes as "fundamentally flawed and dangerously inadequate".
Three e-petitions, sponsored by the Liberals' Jeremy Hansen, are now on the ACT Legislative Assembly website seeking public support for three key reforms, namely:
- To implement sentencing guidelines for grievous and purposefully reckless motor vehicle crimes and addressing re-offending (recidivism);
- Request independent review on the performance at the ACT Judiciary in regards to sentencing in line with the common and statutory laws; and
- Review the process of appointments to the ACT Judiciary to allow transparency and for nominees to meet community expectations.
These e-petitions have been launched by Tom McLuckie, whose son Matthew was killed in a head-on crash with a stolen car being driven on the wrong side of Hindmarsh Drive in May.
Mr McLuckie has been a vigorous campaigner for a judicial review, and believes that court outcomes in the ACT are "soft" and not in line with community expectations.
Mr Rattenbury said previously that he did not support a full judicial review.
However, he said that he was entirely sympathetic to the circumstances of those Canberra families who had suffered the loss of loved ones through road accidents "and I understand why they are upset".
"That's why we've met with them [the grieving families] and spent time with them," he said.
"The thing that we have to try and grapple with is that Australia has some of the lowest crime rates in the world and the ACT has the lowest crime rates in Australia.
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"So we need to really think through these things very carefully.
"One terrible incident in your life is a terrible incident; we can never take that away.
"But we also have to think of the system response is and whether it's a system problem."
Mr Rattenbury said that he is almost certain to be called before the upcoming parliamentary committee inquiry into dangerous driving which has wide-ranging terms of reference to consider the criminal justice and police responses to dangerous driver offending, along with what capacity trauma and support services have to respond to the post-crash event.
Prison sentences, fines and vehicle sanctions will also be considered, along with the effectiveness of rehabilitation and driver re-education at reducing recidivism.
"So it's not like we are doing nothing in this space," Mr Rattenbury said.
While the police association believed that Mr Rattenbury, as a Greens member, has an ideological stance on these issues, the Attorney General disagreed.
"We are taking an evidence-based approach, and the shows crime is overwhelmingly caused by social dysfunction and disadvantage, and the ACT government has invested and committed to a justice reinvestment approach where we seek to focus our resources on avoiding the drivers of crime," he said.
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