The Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council has launched its first online Sentencing Trends tool. A useful resource for practitioners and community alike the tool aims to improve public understanding and accessibility to sentencing trends within the Courts.
Breaking down 15 years of data, the Council’s Sentencing Trends resource includes interactive graphs and information to support people in exploring sentencing trends for adults and children.
“Our Sentencing Trends resource aims to inform the community about the number of offences and offenders sentenced in the different levels of court, what types of offences adults and children are being sentenced for and, possibly of most interest to the community, what types of sentences the courts are handing down,” Mr Robertson said.
Short summaries of each chart provide context about the data which can be filtered to help personalise what people are looking for.
The first two data sets available on the Sentencing Trends resource cover a 14-year (2005–2006 to 2018–2019) and a 15-year (2005–2006 to 2019–2020) sentencing period.
Mr Robertson said the latest data from 2019–2020 showed a decrease in the number of cases sentenced across all court levels which could be attributed to reduced court sittings as a result of the global COVID-19 health pandemic.
The Queensland Sentencing Advisory’s Council’s Sentencing Trends will be an ongoing project with content updated annually to reflect the latest available data.
The Sentencing Trends resource can be accessed for free on the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council’s website.
Share this article