Effective Prosecution of Multiple Offending

Current project status

• Initiation: Could include discussing scope and terms of reference with lead Government Department
• Pre-consultation: Could include approaching interest groups and specialists, producing scoping and issues papers, finalising terms of project
• Consultation: Likely to include consultation events and paper, making provisional proposals for comment
• Policy development: Will include analysis of consultation responses. Could include further issues papers and consultation on draft Bill
• Reported: Usually recommendations for law reform but can be advice to government, scoping report or other recommendations

This project is complete. We published our final report on 15 October 2002

The “effective prosecution of multiple offending” project emerged from our work in Legislating the Criminal Code: Fraud and Deception.

Our final report makes recommendations for changes to criminal practice and procedure to facilitate the more effective prosecution of those who have committed multiple offences. It covers offences of fraudulent trading, continuous offences (cases where there are too many individual offences to be accommodated in a single trial), and a new two-stage trial procedure for repetitious offending which is not regarded as a continuous offence.