SENTENCE OUTCOMES
Information on sentence outcomes in Chapter 3 do not apply the concept of a principal sentence (as applied in Chapter 2). Sentence outcomes presented in this chapter represent all sentences handed down for each offence proven guilty. Where multiple sentence types are handed down for a single offence, these are counted each time. As such the total number of sentence outcomes recorded is greater than the number of offences proven guilty.
Monetary orders were the most common sentence type to be issued overall, comprising 52% (20,622) of all sentence outcomes handed down by the courts. These orders predominantly related to fraud offences (81%).
Of the 39,506 sentences across all court levels, 16% (6,471) were custodial orders. The Higher courts issued custodial orders in 74% of the sentence outcomes, compared with 13% in the Magistrates' and Children's courts.
Fraud offences comprised 70% (4,503) of all custodial orders, followed by communications offences (8%) and financial offences (6%) for all court levels.
The majority (82%) of migration and people smuggling offences resulted in a custodial order. Other offence groups with high proportions of custodial orders were: commonwealth property offences (70%) and commonwealth sexual offences (64%).