Suspended sentence abolition to start from 1 May

Suspended sentences for serious crimes will be abolished from 1 May, Attorney-General, Robert Clark, announced today.

Mr Clark said that the Governor had today set 1 May as the date for the commencement of the relevant provisions, following the passage by Parliament of the Sentencing Further Amendment Act 2011.

The commencement means that offenders who commit serious crimes on or after 1 May will no longer be eligible to receive a suspended sentence.

Suspended sentences will be scrapped for convictions in the Supreme Court and County Court for offences including murder, manslaughter, rape and other serious sexual offences, armed robbery, intentionally or recklessly causing serious injury, aggravated burglary, arson and commercial drug trafficking.

A suspended sentence is where an offender is convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, but the imprisonment is suspended as long as the offender does not re-offend. In the vast majority of cases, the offender then walks from the court completely free and without supervision.

“The abolition of suspended sentences for these offences is the first stage of implementing the Baillieu Government’s commitment to legislate to abolish suspended sentences for all crimes by the end of our first term,” Mr Clark said.

“This marks the beginning of the end for Labor’s revolving door approach to justice, where drug traffickers, arsonists and violent thugs were given pretend prison sentences and then allowed to walk straight out of court.

“Abolishing suspended sentences will put truth back into sentencing, so that jail will mean jail.

“If a judge thinks an offender should not go to jail, the judge will say so openly and put the offender on a community based sentence, instead of the law pretending the offender is being sent to jail.”

May 1 will also be the commencement date for the abolition of the mandatory one month jail term for second and subsequent convictions for driving while disqualified or suspended, which was a provision included in the sentencing legislation passed late in 2010 under the previous government.