Ms Molly Joyce:

I will make a point that ties into sentencing. The establishment of the sentencing guidelines and information committee is welcome. It offers an opportunity to have a frank discussion about what factors are taken into account and whether it is right that a person is more likely to be sent to prison because he or she has been in prison before or whether it should be an express factor that cannot be taken into consideration. Thankfully, we are now in a position of having a forum in which these matters can be discussed, which was not the case previously.

I often track local media reports to get a sense of what is happening in the courts and the kinds of decision being made. Let us try to put ourselves in the place of a judge who has someone with hundreds of convictions before him or her. I have heard of people with 500 convictions. Much of the time, that judge has nowhere else to send the person and has no other response to give. The judge wants to show that the offence is not condoned but has no other option available. There is no clear mechanism, which ties into a more complicated point about mental health, the ways in which people can be transferred out and the diversionary aspects. The high-level task force implementation plan, which was promised by the end of last year and is now in the justice plan, which was yesterday promised for the end of this month, needs to be published and implemented without further delay. It needs to be tracked so that we do not drift further away from the targets.