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Victims engagement

The Council represents many voices of the community, including victims and survivors of crime.

We have close ongoing engagement with victims of crime and the organisations that support them to better understand victims’ needs and perspectives to inform our work.

The Council will always seek to consult with victim survivors in our reviews of sentencing. We do this differently for each review:

  • for our current review, we will be consulting with victim survivors of domestic and family violence and sexual violence offences, including examining how the domestic violence aggravating factor has impacted victim satisfaction with sentencing;
  • for our serious violent offences scheme review, we hosted consultation meetings and forums with victims and support services and worked closely with these services in planning these sessions;
  • for our sentencing for child homicide review, family members of child victims of homicide were involved in two community summits in Brisbane and Townsville, individual meetings, and two roundtables. The roundtables involved representatives from the Queensland Homicide Victims’ Support Group, Bravehearts, PACT and Victim Assist Queensland in addition to victims who attended.

Victims’ interests are currently represented by members of our Council directly, including Warren Strange, former CEO of knowmore, Jo Bryant, former CEO of PACT and Office of the Public Guardian Regional Visiting Manager  of the Community Visitor Program and current long-term Board member of the Daniel Morcombe Foundation, and Philip McCarthy KC, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions.

An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Panel also gives input to the Council and is designed to give a stronger voice and a better sense of how Queensland First Nations communities are affected by current sentencing, as well as greater insight into what changes might be made to improve outcomes.

Further, the Council convenes a Practitioner Consultative Forum, of which the Director of Victim Assist Queensland is a standing member, which meets regularly and supports the Council with its work.