The Minns Labor Government is continuing to pursue reforms to ‘good character’ evidence at sentencing, after the Greens and Coalition voted to water down changes which would reduce trauma for victim-survivors.
The Government is urging the Greens and Coalition to back this reform, which seeks to remove ‘good character’ as a mitigating factor for all offences including sexual assault, murder, domestic and family violence and road crime.
The Greens and Coalition voted in the Legislative Council last week to gut the Government’s nation-leading reforms by removing ‘good character’ as a mitigating factor only for sexual offences.
Their amendments retained ‘good character’ for all other offences, with the court allowed discretion about whether to give it weight.
The removal of good character references for sexual offences is a step in the right direction, and the Government will not stand in the way of this change.
But it does not go far enough, and the Government will tomorrow introduce legislation to abolish ‘good character’ as a mitigating factor for all other offences.
This will ensure that no victim of crime, or family victim of a person murdered or killed by a dangerous driver, will be forced to sit in court and listen to a convicted offender be described as someone of otherwise ‘good character’.
The Government’s legislation is in line with recommendations from the independent NSW Sentencing Council, which engaged in extensive public consultation and recommended ‘good character’ be removed as a mitigating factor on sentencing for all offences.
The Sentencing Council found the use of ‘good character’ evidence was vague, subjective and perpetuated inequality within the criminal justice system because it was not equally available to all offenders.
Numerous submissions from organisations and individuals also made clear the substantial harm which is caused to victim-survivors by these irrelevant references.
This reform does not affect the fairness of a trial or a judge’s ability to consider the whole person at sentencing. It simply makes the criminal justice system less traumatising for people who are unfortunate enough to find themselves the victim of crime or have lost someone they love.
The Greens and Coalition have another chance to protect all victim-survivors of crime, and we urge them not to squib it again.
Attorney General Michael Daley said:
“Our bill will ensure that all victims of crime are afforded the same protections and spared the trauma that good character references are proven to cause.
“We are determined to fight for the people across our NSW community who are victims of crime.
“By introducing this legislation, we are giving the Greens and the Opposition another chance to back this evidence-based reform to make the justice system fairer and more trauma-informed.”