New South Wales Consolidated Acts

CRIMES (SENTENCING PROCEDURE) ACT 1999 - SECT 48

48 Information about release date

(1) When sentencing an offender to imprisonment for an offence, or to an aggregate sentence of imprisonment for 2 or more offences, a court must specify-

(a) the day on which the sentence commences or is taken to have commenced, and

(b) the earliest day on which it appears (on the basis of the information currently available to the court) that the offender will become entitled to be released from custody, or eligible to be released on parole, having regard to-

(i) that and any other sentence of imprisonment to which the offender is subject, and

(ii) the non-parole periods (if any) for that and any other sentence of imprisonment to which the offender is subject.

Example No 1: A court sentences an offender to 7 days’ imprisonment. The sentence is imposed on a Monday. The court has not set a non-parole period. The offender is not subject to any other sentence of imprisonment. In this example, the court should specify that the sentence commences on the Monday on which it is imposed and that the earliest day on which the offender will become entitled to be released from custody is the following Sunday.
Example No 2: A court sentences an offender to 12 months’ imprisonment. The sentence is imposed on 5 May 2000. The court has set a non-parole period of 9 months. The offender is not subject to any other sentence of imprisonment. Because the offender has been remanded in custody for sentencing since 27 April 2000, the court has backdated the commencement of the sentence to that date. In this example, the court should specify that the sentence is taken to have commenced on 27 April 2000 and that the earliest date on which the offender will become entitled to be released on parole is 26 January 2001.
Example No 3: A court sentences an offender to 2 years’ imprisonment. The sentence is imposed on 3 June 2000. The court has set a non-parole period of 18 months. The offender is subject to one other sentence of imprisonment in respect of which the offender will become eligible to be released on parole on 21 September 2000. The court has directed that the new sentence is to run consecutively with the other sentence. In this example, the court should specify that the sentence commences on 22 September 2000 and that the earliest date on which the offender will become eligible to be released on parole is 21 March 2002.

(2) The purpose of this section is to require a court to give information about the likely effect of a sentence.

(3) The failure of a court to comply with the requirements of this section with respect to a sentence does not invalidate the sentence.