Sex offenders – more must be done to strengthen legal system

Much more needs to be done to continue to strengthen Victoria’s legal system following the tragic murder of Masa Vukotic.

Changes to sex offender laws debated in Parliament yesterday make some improvements, but we need to make many more changes,  These include changes to bail, electronic monitoring, information sharing and sentencing.

The previous Coalition government strengthened the legal system and acted to fix problems whenever they emerged. The current government must do the same.

Here’s some of what I told Parliament yesterday –

“…the main problem with the bill is that it falls short of what is needed…

“…[we need to] rethink from first principles how the criteria to identify unacceptable risk are specified and potentially to completely rewrite how the presumption of bail and its exceptions are specified. For example, should it be made much harder for those with a list of past convictions to be granted bail when they are charged with a further serious offence?…

“There would seem to be a strong case for making electronic monitoring a standard requirement for sex offenders under SSODSA, with the absence of monitoring being only in exceptional cases….

“The previous government … committed to pilot data sharing between police, corrections and the courts, using advanced software technology to allow the identification of high-risk family violence perpetrators. Not only did we announce it, but while we were in government we committed funding to it…

“I urge the government to continue with the pilot because there is continually growing potential to effectively use technology to better protect the community by making use of smart software that can detect emerging trends out of large databases to identify risk factors and alert authorities and, therefore, allow pre-emptive actions and speedy responses…

“The final area I will mention is sentencing… the key issue is considering the actual level of sentence being imposed, not simply the maximum sentence available for a particular offence… any changes to the sentencing regime [must] result in changes to the sentences that are actually imposed and bring them into line with what the Parliament, on behalf of the community, believes to be the appropriate sentencing range to protect the community and deter offending.”.

To read the full text of my remarks, see the Hansard from yesterday’s debate.