Question On Notice No. 2652 asked in the Legislative Council on 30 October 2019 by Hon Michael Mischin
Question Directed to the: Leader of the House representing the Attorney General
Parliament: 40 Session: 1
Question
I refer to the following Law Reform Initiatives announced as Labor election commitments in January 2017, and ask in respect of each, the date when the Attorney General issued instructions to initiate it, its progress and current status and, to the extent that legislation is necessary, when the Bill will be introduced into Parliament:
(a) the " BOCSAR" or Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in partnership with a
Western Australian university;
(b) the Law Reform Commission's "review of enforcement schemes from around Australia" to advise on "best practice;
(c) the sentencing database "that will provide comprehensive data of all sentences"; and
(d) the amendments to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) legislation to require the DPP to report annually to a Standing Committee of Parliament and appear and explain the rationale for decisions not to prosecute, to discontinue prosecutions, to accept pleas to lesser charges, and not to appeal?
Answered on 4 December 2019
(a) The Office is in the process of being established.
(b) This election commitment was instead delivered by the Department of Justice as part of extensive preparation for the drafting and introduction into Parliament of amendments to the Fines, Penalties and Infringement Notice Enforcement Act 1994.
(c) See (a)
(d) This election commitment was superseded by outcomes from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which in its 2017 Criminal Justice report recommended Directors of Public Prosecutions implement a complaints system and publish data in their annual reports. The WA Government accepted in principle recommendations 41-43 of the Criminal Justice Report on 27 June 2018. As per the recommendations, the WA Director of Public Prosecutions has implemented a robust and formalised complaints mechanism to allow victims to seek internal merits review of key decisions. The results of the annual auditing were published in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions 2018-19 annual report. It should be noted that the ability of victims to seek review of "key decisions" under the Royal Commission recommendation goes further than the election commitment to provide explanations for certain selected decisions, including discontinuances and plea deals. Including this information in the ODPP annual report enlivens the ability of the Legislative Assembly's Community Development and Justice Standing Committee and the Legislative Council's Standing Committee on Estimates and Financial Operations to scrutinise the material in annual report hearings. Upon tabling of the ODPP's annual report for 2018-19, the Attorney General wrote to the Community Development and Justice Standing Committee, which has specific portfolio responsibility for the Attorney General's agencies, to advise it of the changes in the ODPP's annual report brought about by the Criminal Justice Report recommendations. Separately and going beyond the Criminal Justice Report recommendations, the DPP has revised her Office's procedures to give broader explanations for key decisions. Prosecutors lodging a discontinuance must now announce the reasons behind it in open court, and media can be provided with reasons beyond the bare legal descriptor (ie 'no reasonable prospect of a conviction', 'no prima facie case'). These changes were gazetted on 1 August, 2018.