The Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) outlines a range of available sentencing types (sentencing orders) for adults found guilty of offences in Victoria.
A court must not impose a sentence that is more severe than necessary to achieve one or more of the five purposes of sentencing. This is known as the principle of parsimony.
Available Sentence Types
The main sentence types available for adults in Victoria are:
- imprisonment
- drug and alcohol treatment order
- community correction order
- fine
- adjourned undertaking
- dismissal or discharge.
A court can also impose diversion (which isn’t technically a sentence).
Additional Orders
Courts can impose additional orders to the sentence given to an adult offender. These are sometimes referred to as ancillary orders. Additional orders include:
- a restitution order requiring the offender to return stolen property to the original owner, or to return the proceeds from its sale
- a compensation order requiring the offender to pay the victim financial compensation for injury (including pain or suffering), medical or other expenses resulting from the offence, or damage, loss or destruction of property resulting from the offence
- confiscation and forfeiture of property used to commit an offence, property obtained from an offence or unexplained wealth
- a pecuniary penalty order requiring the offender to pay an amount of money equivalent to what they gained from an offence.
A court may disqualify or suspend an offender from driving or order installation of an interlock device in the offender’s car.
Under the Sex Offenders Registration Act 2004 (Vic), offenders convicted of certain sexual offences are automatically registered as sex offenders. For other sexual offences, the court can decide whether to register an offender.
When someone has been found guilty of an offence, the judge or magistrate may record a conviction. A conviction is a formal record that the offender has been found guilty of an offence. There are rules about whether a conviction has to be recorded. These depend on the type of sentence imposed.
Courts are required to record a conviction when imposing certain types of sentences, such as imprisonment. However, courts must not record a conviction when imposing other types of sentences, such as a dismissal of the charge. For all other sentence types, such as a community correction order, courts can choose whether to record a conviction.
Statistics on Sentence Types
We publish sentencing statistics on our website that show which sentencing types are imposed on adults in Victoria, including:
- sentencing trends over time, including sentencing outcomes in the Magistrates’ Court and in the higher courts
- sentencing outcomes in the higher courts for select offences in our Sentencing Snapshots series
- sentencing outcomes for hundreds of offences in the Magistrates’ Court and higher courts on our SACStat database of sentencing statistics.
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