The NSW Council for Civil Liberties (CCL) welcomes the opportunity to respond to the
Consultation Paper by the NSW Sentencing Council: Victims’ involvement in sentencing.
(September 2017) (The Paper).
The Paper provides a useful summary of the range of issues around victims’ involvement in
sentencing. CCL has focussed on responding briefly to questions relevant to the issues we regard
as important from a civil liberties perspective. We have focussed on answers rather than
reworking the arguments for various possible responses – as these are reasonably familiar and
are well covered in the Paper.
We have not responded at this time to the questions relating to restorative justice but hope
there may be a later opportunity to provide some input as to our views on this very important
dimension.