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20 Aust. & N.Z. J. Criminology 1 (1987)

handle is hein.journals/anzjc20 and id is 1 raw text is: 








AUST &  NZ JOURNAL  OF CRIMINOLOGY   (March 1987) 20 (1-2)


                               EDITORIAL

Pre-Trial Decision Making
The pre-trial area in the criminal justice process covers the events between criminal
investigation and the trial or court hearing. It commences with the decision to
charge and  includes such matters as the committal hearing, plea-bargaining and
pre-trial disclosure. It is an area of obvious importance in the criminal justice
process. Despite its importance, it has until recently received comparatively little
attention in Australia. In 1980 the Australian Law Reform  Commission   in its
Report,  The Sentencing of Federal Offenders (at p 6) described the process of
prosecution in Australia as probably the most secretive, least understood and most
poorly documented  aspect of the administration of criminal justice.
  Over  the last few years, however, the situation has changed considerably and
much  of the pre-trial phase of the criminal justice process has come under close
scrutiny.
  There  are many reasons for this new interest. It is, no doubt, part of the overall
examination  of the whole criminal justice process which has been occurring in
Australia over the last decade or so. It is also an area which offers scope for
cost-saving and   efficiency measures  to governments   and  criminal  justice
administators. In addition, there has been of late a number of highly public cases
which have focused public interest on the pre-trial area. The trials of the late Lionel
Murphy,  a High Court judge, and of Norm Gallagher, a prominent union official,
provoked  considerable discussion about the appropriate criteria for laying criminal
charges.
  Developments   and changes have occurred and  are occurring in this area. For
example,  in  1982 the  Commonwealth Attorney-General published a set of
guidelines entitled Prosecution Policy of the Commonwealth. These guidelines dealt
with such issues as the criteria to be used in determining the charges to be laid; the
granting of indemnities or  pardons to witnesses; and  plea-bargaining. These
guidelines have since been  replaced by  the 1986 guidelines prepared by  the
Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.   However,  the 1982 guidelines
opened  up the whole area of prosecution policy and brought a number of sensitive
and rarely discussed issues (such as plea-bargaining) into the public arena. The
creation in some jurisdictions of the position of Director of Public Prosecutions has
been an acknowledgement  of the importance and often sensitive nature of pre-trial
prosecutorial decisions. In 1985, the Victorian Shorter Trials Committee, whose
brief was  to consider and  make   recommendations   concerning methods   of
shortening criminal committals and trials and of rendering such proceedings less
expensive, devoted over half of its Report on Criminal Trials to the pre-trial area,
with separate chapters on  the decision to prosecute, pre-trial disclosure, the
sentencing discount for pleading guilty, and plea-bargaining.
  In December  1986, the New South Wales  Law Reform  Commission  produced  a
Discussion Paper entitled Procedure From Charge  To Trial: A General Proposal
For Reform. The  Discussion Paper outlined a number of problems which it saw in
the pre-trial area. These included: the absence of comprehensive rules governing
disclosure of information by the prosecution; problems in determining whether a
case should be heard summarily or on indictment; the failure of committal hearings;


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