The Victorian government has pledged $84m to better manage serious sex offenders, including $54m for a facility to house sex offenders and other violent criminals considered to be at high risk of reoffending. It comes in response to a report outlining systemic failures in the state’s management of those who have committed serious sexual crimes.
The report follows the murder of Melbourne school girl Masa Vukotic who was stabbed to death in March last year. Convicted rapist, Sean Price, pleaded guilty to her murder.
The 256-page document, released on Sunday, recommends sweeping changes to the state’s supervision of dangerous offenders, including broadening the scope of supervision orders to include those deemed to be at risk of violent crime, not just violent sexual crimes.
The report also recommends establishing a new body to oversee the management of supervision orders; providing better integration with mental health services; and providing more accommodation options for high-risk offenders released from prison on a supervision order.
Dubbed the Harper report after David Harper, the judge who was its lead author, the report also recommends that offenders who fit the criteria for a supervision order start undergoing a management plan three years before their earliest possible release from prison.
The Victorian deputy premier, James Merlino, said the government had accepted the report’s 35 recommendations in principle and would commit $84m in Wednesday’s state budget to implement them, including $54.2m for a secure 20-bed facility for the most dangerous and risky offenders.
It will also pledge $18m to expand the supervision and support provided to offenders with a mental illness or cognitive impairment, of which $4.5m would go towards a new accommodation facility.
“We made a promise to Masa’s family that we would implement these changes,” Merlino told reporters on Sunday. “It is unacceptable that we had someone as dangerous as Price out in the community and free to roam. If you are a danger to the community you will not be in the community.”
Vukotic murder, Sean Price, was a violent sex offender who had been released on parole six months earlier and was subject to a supervision order under the Serious Sex Offenders (Detention and Supervision) Act 2009.
He handed himself in to his community corrections officer two days later, after committing another rape, a robbery and an attempted theft. Price was sentenced to 38 years’ jail last month.
The report said that serious breaches of supervision orders were rare and that Price was the first person to have committed murder while under supervision.
As of August 2015 there were 118 people subject to post-sentence detention or supervision orders, only two of whom were deemed to pose such a great risk that they remained in detention after the end of their sentence.
Merlino said the new secure facility would be specifically geared to violent offenders and would be located alongside a prison, although it would not itself be considered a prison.
“We can’t detain everyone who is the worst of the worst … the Harper review indicates that we need a graduated response to ensure that those who are the threat to the community are appropriately put into facilities to protect the community,” he said.
The report, co-authored by forensic psychiatrist Professor Paul Mullen and Melbourne University criminal and mental health law expert Professor Bernadette McSherry, cautions against the unfettered expansion of supervision orders, saying supervision or detention after a sentence has been completed is: “a significant departure from the principles generally held to be important in a democratic society” and could “only be justified under carefully limited circumstances”.
However it says the orders should be expanded to include people imprisoned for serious, violent offences who “present an unacceptable risk of harm to the community,” as well as those with a serious history of sexual crimes.
Merlino said: “The failure of there being mechanisms under the scheme to do with violent offenders goes to the very heart of the systemic and legislative failures in this case because there was not the capacity through the orders to address violent behaviour or mitigate the risk around violent behaviour.”
The report also recommends the establishment of a new independent governing body, the Public Protection Authority, which would be responsible for the management of serious offenders both pre- and post-release. Offenders would be case-managed by multidisciplinary public protection panels that would coordinate service delivery and provide better access to things like mental healths services.
But the report says that even if all its recommendations were introduced, the risk of reoffending could never be eliminated.
“The eradication of risk is impossible … it is important that the community understands this,” the report says. “The most significant potential source of misunderstanding is the media. A significant community disservice will be done if false expectations are generated.
“Like harm will also be done if a system which is as well designed as possible, and as well managed as it can be, is falsely accused of failure when a serious crime is committed by an offender under the supervision of the scheme.”
