NCJ Number
213763
Date Published
October 2005
Length
132 pages
Annotation
This is the 2004-2005 Annual Report of the New South Wales (Australia) Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), which manages criminal prosecutions in the State.
Abstract
The ODPP director reports that the most significant development of the year was the adoption of the indictable Criminal Case Processing initiative. The goal of this initiative is to reduce the number of late guilty pleas, particularly in the district court. This is an effort to encourage guilty pleas earlier in the pretrial stage in order to reduce expenditures associated with preparing for trials. In the area of financial management, the ODPP has upgraded the system to a Web-based operation, which provides managers with easier access to financial information. A pilot program of the Activity Based Costing system has been successfully concluded. When fully implemented, it will provide quicker access to accurate information on the time and cost of critical tasks in the prosecution process. In the area of victim services, the ODPP conducted its biennial survey of victims and witnesses. It found overall consistency in the levels of victim/witness satisfaction. Staff turnover was 6 percent, compared with 5.8 percent the previous fiscal year. Over the year, the ODPP completed just over 40 submissions on proposals for law reform in New South Wales. The subjects of these submissions included Uniform Evidence Acts, back-end home detention, the Mental Health Act, the suspended sentence provisions, expert witnesses, and majority jury verdicts. Appendixes contain extensive data on case processing, finances, and personnel.