Criminology Research Council grant ; (1/86)
The aim of this study was to determine whether the availability of a range of intensive community-based corrections (CBC) sentences resulted in either the diversion to CBC programs of offenders who would otherwise have gone to prison, or net widening to include offenders who would otherwise have received a non-correctional punishment such as a fine or a bond. The sentences whose impact was the focus of the study were Attendance Centre Orders (ACO) and Community Service Orders (CSO), which were introduced in Victoria on a state-wide basis in 1985, and Community-Based Orders, which supplanted ACO's and CSO's in 1986.
In order to determine the specific impact of the introduction of CBC sentences in 1985 and 1986, the design of the study con- trolled a variety of extraneous factors, which could have affected the results.
The data sources for the study were the Court Registers from five Magistrates' Courts: Geelong, Moe, Dandenong, Oakleigh and Sunshine. Only cases where a conviction and sentence was recorded were collected.
The study's results showed that there were very large inter-regional differences in offending and sentencing patterns. As a result, diversion and net widening had to be evaluated on a region by region basis.
In two regions (Southern and Gippsland) the introduction of CBC sentences apparently resulted in a significant degree of diversion from imprisonment, in that the increase in the use of CBC sentences was accompanied by a decrease in the use of imprisonment. In two other regions the evidence was more equivocal; in one region (Western port) the increased use of CBC sentences appeared to result from both diversion from imprisonment and net widening from non-correctional sentences; in the other region (Western) the changes in offending patterns over the course of the study were so great that no reliable conclusions could be drawn. Finally, in the Barwon region the relatively small increase in the use of CBC sentences appeared to be almost entirely due to net widening from fines.