Mandatory Sentences in Northern Territory Amended to include more Offences

The Northern Territory Parliament has given assent to its first 2013 Act entitled the Sentencing Amendment (Mandatory Minimum Sentences) Act 2013. The Act is due to commence immediately after the commencement of the Criminal Code Amendment (Assaults on Workers) Act 2013, which at this point has yet to be proclaimed.

The Act sets out to repeal the current section 78BA of the Sentencing Act which dealt with mandatory sentencing for violent offences. The amending Act inserts Division 6A in place of section 78BA and provides for mandatory minimum sentences for assaults. It also provides for an exemption from the application of the mandatory minimum sentences where exceptional circumstances apply and where the offender was a youth at the time of the offense.

President Goldflam of the Criminal Laws Association of the Northern Territory has criticised the new laws as "unfair, unprincipled, unworkable, unnecessary and unaffordable. He predicted that the law would only see more people, a great majority of which would be of Aboriginal descent, going to gaol."

Recently retired Justice Mildren of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory has recently described mandatory sentencing as a “cancer”. His powerful and precise obiter in Trenerry v Bradley (1997) 6 NTLR 175 have been frequently cited: “prescribed minimum mandatory sentences are the very antithesis of just sentences”.

Read the full CLANT article here. 

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