This report is the Council’s response to the Victorian Attorney-General’s request for advice on the most effective legislative mechanism to provide sentencing guidance to courts in a way that promotes consistency of approach in sentencing offenders and public confidence in the criminal justice system.

Asset confiscation is a tool that Victoria’s law enforcement and public prosecution agencies use in response to criminal activity. There are three key agencies that work together to achieve the objectives of the Asset Confiscation Scheme—Victoria Police, the Office of Public Prosecutions and the Department of Justice & Regulation. This follow-up audit examined the progress...

Barristers and solicitors have taken the unprecedented step of rallying to demand an increase in legal aid funding. Will it come to wigs on the picket lines? It was at the polite end of the protest spectrum. As the hundreds of people rallying outside Melbourne’s County Court threatened to block pedestrian access along Lonsdale Street...

This report forms part of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse’s research program in relation to criminal justice system’s response to child sexual abuse in institutional contexts. This study investigated the extent to which joint trials with cross-admissible tendency evidence infringed defendants’ rights, and the extent to which joint trials posed...

This report examines trends in setting non-parole periods for imprisonment sentences over the five years ending 30 June 2015. The report considers how the courts’ use of non-parole periods changed between 2010–11 and 2014–15 and the factors that influenced the length of non-parole periods imposed by the courts during this period.