On 13 February 2007, the Human Rights Law Resource Centre made a submission to the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council in response to their Discussion and Options Paper, entitled High-Risk Offenders: Post-Sentence Supervision and Detention.
As the Paper identifies, a scheme of post-sentence supervision and detention may be incompatible with or infringe a range of human rights under both international human rights law (particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) and domestic human rights law (particularly the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities), including:
- The right to liberty and security and freedom from arbitrary detention;
- The right to freedom from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
- The right to humane treatment when deprived of liberty;
- The right to a fair hearing;
- The right to a presumption of innocence and procedural fairness;
- The right not to be punished more than once; and
- The right to freedom from retrospective criminal laws or penalties.
The HRLRC submission considers the discussion in the Paper of the right to freedom from arbitrary detention enshrined by art 9 of the ICCPR and s 21 of the Charter. It also considers the discussion in the Paper of the right to humane treatment when deprived of liberty enshrined by art 10 of the ICCPR and s 22 of the Charter. Finally, the submission considers the permissibility of limitations of each of the rights identified in the Paper and above.
