NCJ Number
114796
Date Published
1988
Length
176 pages
Annotation
This study assessed the impact of New Zealand's 1985 Criminal Justice Act (CJA) on sentencing practices, using computerized data on convictions between 1979 and 1987.
Abstract
The CJA followed a comprehensive review of penal reform and gave new directions to courts on sentencing practice. Provisions broadened the scope of community alternatives to incarceration (e.g., community care and service, supervision, reparation, and periodic detention) and instructed courts to make the greatest use possible of such sanctions for property and other nonserious offenses. The CJA also instructed courts to ensure that offenses involving serious violence received custodial sanctions and to determine sentence lengths on the basis of the need for public protection. Overall, results indicate that these objectives have been met, although its effect on the use of community-based alternatives has not been as great as anticipated. While a smaller proportion of property offenders received custodial sentences under the CJA, this has not resulted in a reduction in prison populations because of a 50-percent increase in violent offending since 1979, particularly serious violent offending. In accordance with provisions, courts have been sentencing a higher proportion of serious offenders to prison and giving them substantially longer sentences. Thus, courts have translated the Act's distinction between serious violence and other forms of offending into action. 65 tables.