Qld parole backlog: Former chief justice suggested fix

The state’s former top judge proposed changing legislation to combat a growing parole board backlog, it has emerged.

The state’s former top judge proposed changing legislation so courts could set fixed parole release dates when sentences were five years’ jail or less, to combat a growing parole board backlog.

New figures have revealed there was a sudden rise in the number of prisoners seeking judicial review in February last year because the board had failed to consider their applications for parole within the legal time frame.

The Supreme Court of Queensland’s 2020-21 annual report also revealed that during the last four months of the financial year, applications exceeded 50 a month and peaked at 83 in April.

The number of applications never exceeded single digits during the first seven months of the financial year.

“This absorbs registry and court time and resources in dealing with applications where the outcome is usually inevitable,” then chief justice Catherine Holmes wrote in the report, which was given to the Government last October.

Former chief justice Catherine Holmes

Ms Holmes wrote that she expected “these problems will continue well into the future”.

Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman said two temporary teams which supported the board had addressed the increase, and that the workload had returned to pre-Covid-19 levels.

The Courier-Mail last year revealed there were two jails’ worth of prisoners awaiting parole decisions and that the board was sinking under the heaviest workload in its history.

Ms Holmes wrote in the annual report that extending the statutory time frame for decisions by 180 days was unlikely to help.

“There is a strong argument for an amendment to the Penalties and Sentences Act 1991 to enable courts to set parole release dates (i.e. fixed dates) rather than parole eligibility dates (requiring consideration by the board) where the sentence being imposed is five years or less,” she wrote.

Shadow attorney-general Tim Nicholls took aim at Ms Fentiman, saying she should have released the report sooner.

“It clearly highlights the Government’s failures when it comes to the parole board delays,” he said.