September 2013
Resourcing a stronger parole system
for increased community safety
Response to
Ian Callinan AC
Review of the parole system in Victoria
Inquiries to:
Michelle McDonnell
Senior Policy Adviser
Federation of Community Legal Centres (Victoria) Inc
03 9652 1507
[email protected]
About the Federation of
Community Legal
Centres (Victoria) Inc
The Federation is the peak body for 51 community legal centres (CLCs) across Victoria.
The Federation leads and supports CLCs in
pursuing social equity and access to justice.
The Federation:
•Provides information and referrals to people
seeking legal assistance.
•Works for law reform to develop a fairer legal
system that better responds to the needs of
the disadvantaged.
•Works to build a stronger and more effective
community legal sector.
•Provides services and support to CLCs.
•Represents CLCs’ priorities and interests.
About community legal
centres and why an
effective parole system
matters to us
Every year, community legal centres assist
over 100,000 Victorians. Over 80% of our clients earn less than $26,000 a year and
around 60% receive assistance from Centrelink. In particular, we assist people with
mental illness and intellectual disability,
homeless people, young people, Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples and people
from culturally diverse backgrounds.
CLCs support many people who are the victims
of crime, particularly violent and sexual crime.
For example, in 2011/12 Victorian CLCs assisted approximately 10,000 victims of family
violence with information and legal advice,
and around one in every three new cases
opened in CLCs related to family violence.
CLC client groups have the most to gain from
criminal justice policies that successfully reduce crime — and the most to lose from
policies that are ineffective and discriminatory.
The experience of crime is not shared equally
across the community. The clients we repre-
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sent are more vulnerable to crime and accordingly will benefit from effective crime reduction
measures to a greater extent.
We support the existence of a well-resourced,
effective parole system.
Parole has been shown to reduce recidivism
by providing a gradual and supervised release
into the community, accompanied by restrictions that reduce the likelihood of formerly
imprisoned people committing further crimes.
Any changes to the parole system must be
underpinned by an understanding that properly resourced and managed parole enhances
community safety by ensuring that, when released from prison, parolees are subject to
supervision, placed on conditions tailored to
best mitigate risk factors for the particular
individual, and connected into necessary programs and services to maximise rehabilitation.
Introduction
In May 2013, the Victorian Government commissioned Mr Ian Callinan AC to review the Adult Parole
Board’s operations (‘the Callinan report’). The report was provided to government in July 2013 and
was publicly released in redacted form in August 2013.
The Federation of Community Legal Centres (Victoria) welcomes this opportunity for community feedback on the Callinan report.
Current plans may exacerbate rather than improve risk
The Federation acknowledges that there have been serious failures with the parole system in Victoria
in the last few years. As a result of a tragic combination of circumstances including some serious failings by the Adult Parole Board, Victoria Police and Community Corrections, parolees who should have
had their parole cancelled have committed extremely serious offences including violent, fatal crimes
against women.
We agree that the parole system as it stood clearly warranted scrutiny and needed to be reviewed with
recommendations urgently acted on and resources allocated to reduce the prospect of further tragedies.
A number of reviews into the parole system and the supervision of parolees have been conducted
since 2011, several of which have been released publicly. A consistent theme in the reviews to date
has been the deficiencies in resourcing, information and personnel systems and the risk assessment
tools used.1
We are deeply concerned that without a timely commitment of government funding to resource improvements to the Adult Parole Board and Community Correctional Services, further tragic
consequences may result.
At the same time, we have concerns with negative outcomes that will result if the government implements several measures proposed in the Callinan report, particularly the recommendation that
‘potentially dangerous’ offenders not be granted parole unless the Adult Parole Board considers there
is a negligible risk of re-offending. We believe that the adoption of this criterion for the grant of parole
will ultimately put community safety at risk because under this recommendation, more serious offenders will be released at the end of their sentence with no supervision, no conditions and no requirement
to access programs and services that will give them the best possible prospect of maintaining a crime
free life.
Commitment to resourcing the parole system to make it more effective
The Callinan report, like those that have preceded it, identified a number of issues that have impacted
on the effectiveness of the parole system. These include:


The workload of the Parole Board which he describes as ‘intolerably heavy’ and under-resourced.
High turnover among Community Correctional Services parole officers and an inability to retain
talented and experienced parole officers due to a poor salary and career structure.
The need for improved training for Community Correctional Services staff who are responsible for
supervising parolees.
Poor systems for gathering and sharing information between police, prisons, Community
Correctional Services and the Parole Board.


1
Sentencing Advisory Council (Vic) Review of the Victorian Adult Parole System Report (2012); Ogloff and Office of Correctional
Services Review Review of parolee re-offending by way of murder (2011); Corrections Victoria Strategy and Forecasting Branch
(2012) Consolidated responses to reviews of offenders charged with murder.
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
The use of an inferior risk assessment tool by Community Correctional Services and the absence of
an electronic database and case management system in the Parole Board.
It is clear that these deficiencies cannot be addressed without additional resources and that unless
they are addressed community expectations of a safer, more effective system cannot be met.
We note with concern that the Callinan report makes no explicit recommendations for additional government resourcing and in fact implies and accepts that resources to strengthen the system will be
‘inevitably’ limited because Mr Callinan is of the view that ‘there will always be much less sympathy for
those who have committed crimes’ resulting in ‘political and social limitation on funds made available
for rehabilitation and reintegration into the community. 2 We urge the government to prioritise community safety over concerns about whether there is ‘sympathy’ for attempts to fix the system.
Proposed ‘negligible risk’ threshold for parole likely to increase reoffending
As we have already indicated, we are extremely concerned about the impact of measure six and associated recommendations, under which a broad range of offenders could be granted parole only if the
Adult Parole Board found ‘to a very high degree of probability’ that the person posed a ‘negligible risk’
of reoffending.
Mr Callinan himself concedes, if adopted, these measures will result in fewer grants of parole.3
These measures focus on creating a new parole classification system in which certain prisoners are
labelled ‘potentially dangerous prisoners’ (‘PDPs’). 4 Prisoners coming under this classification would
have virtually no prospects of obtaining parole because the risk of reoffending for this category would
be changed from ‘unacceptable’ to negligible. This labelling is based entirely on offence type classification according to previous convictions.
The proposed new category covers a very wide scope of offences and includes home burglary, which,
in itself covers a wide scope in terms of seriousness of offending including less serious offences such
as stealing gardening tools from a backyard shed of an unoccupied house.
We do not consider the basis for including this cohort with offenders who have committed multiple
sexual or serious violent offences has been established.
The ultimate impact of fewer grants of parole will result in prisoners serving longer sentence terms in
prison which will contribute to further unsustainable growth in Victoria’s already expanding prison
population. As a direct result of sentencing practice and reforms such as the abolition of suspended
sentences and home detention, bail reforms and the introduction of baseline sentencing for gross
violence offences, the Victorian Government has already had to commit an additional $1 billion towards new prison beds in the last three budgets. These changes to the threshold for parole would
require an even greater overinvestment in prison beds at the expense of a more sophisticated response that reserves prison for those who pose the highest risk and focuses on rehabilitation and
reintegration.
Most importantly, however, these measures will increase the likelihood that serious offenders will
reoffend following release from prison. They would see offenders considered by Mr Callinan to be the
most serious and potentially dangerous offenders released into the community with no supervision, no
conditions and no connection to services and programs to support a crime-free re-entry to the com-
Callinan (2013) Review of the Parole System in Victoria, 11.
Callinan (2013) Review of the Parole System in Victoria, 101.
4 Measures 5, 6 and 7.
2
3
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munity even when they have served extremely long prison sentences. These measures are highly
flawed and will create, not reduce, risk to the community.
Self-initiated parole applications undermine the parole process
The proposed measure requiring prisoners serving sentences of three or more years to make their own
application for parole rather than the Parole Board initiating their application would ultimately result in
fewer parole applications. This is because a prisoner’s prospect of parole and supervised re-entry to
the community will depend on their capacity to apply.
In practical terms this means prisoners, including those who pose no or minimal risk, will be excluded
from parole because they cannot pay for legal assistance, cannot understand the process for making
an application, cannot read or complete the forms or correspondence required or otherwise lack capacity.5 As well as being unfair, this would undermine the parole process in which all decisions should
be based on well informed, well-considered and sophisticated assessments about how to most effectively manage and mitigate risk to the community.
Increasing transparency and Charter compliance increases public safety
We oppose the report’s conclusion that the Parole Board should continue to be exempt from complying with the rules of natural justice set out in section 69(2) of the Corrections Act (1986) and also
remain exempt from the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act (2006) ('the Charter) indefinitely. 6
The parole system can have a significant impact on a prisoner’s life. Decisions by the Board can deprive prisoners of liberty and cause them to spend months or years more in prison under sentence.
The Board’s decisions can also severely affect parolees’ quality of life, placing strict limits on where
they can live, where they can go and with whom they can associate.
In addition, as we have discussed above and as a number of tragic cases have illustrated, the decisions and operations of the Adult Parole Board have a direct impact on community safety.
Given the serious consequences that can flow from the Board’s decisions, it is entirely appropriate
that proper safeguards be implemented to ensure the quality of those decisions. For example, the
requirements of natural justice would assist various parties affected by decisions of the Board to confirm that decisions are based on accurate and relevant information. Requiring the Board to comply
with natural justice and the Charter is a critical safeguard. The current exemption from this requirement cannot be justified and should be removed. Removing this requirement will not place undue
restrictions on the Board’s practices. On the contrary, it will enhance the transparency and operation
of the Board.
In his report, Mr Callinan categorically and consistently characterises the functions of the Parole Board
as functions of the executive. It therefore follows that the Board, like all other public authorities,
should be bound to act in a manner that is consistent with the rights enshrined in the Charter.
Detention orders applications must be independent of government
We oppose the recommendation that responsibility for applying for detention orders be removed from
the DPP and given to Corrections Victoria or the Department of Justice.7 As recommended by SAC in
Two thirds of Victoria's prison population may have an acquired brain injury: Corrections Victoria (2012) Acquired Brain Injury in
the Victorian Prison System, 14; while 86% have not completed secondary school: Yvette Bockisch (2009) Assessing prisoner
basic skills gaps- Corrections Victoria’s Language Literacy and Numeracy Assessment Toolkit.
6 Measure 8.
7 Measure 16.
5
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2007, we consider that the DPP, as Victoria’s independent prosecution service, is better placed to
handle applications for post-sentence orders. This ensures that the application process is removed to
the greatest extent possible from the political process and can therefore be perceived to be free from
any suggestion of political interference.
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