Corrections Media Release: Supreme Court Ruling

23 September 2016

Chief Executive Ray Smith.

Corrections has always followed the lawful rulings of the Court in its calculation of sentence release dates. On four previous occasions, the Court of Appeal had upheld Corrections’ practices in calculating pre-sentence detention.

Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling changes the way Corrections must calculate prisoner sentence release dates and, in light of this, Corrections must now recalculate the sentences of affected prisoners.

Twenty-one prisoners have been identified who are immediately affected by the decision and they will be released today.

Corrections has solid plans in place to ensure these releases are managed well from a public safety and reintegration perspective.

Around 500 serving prisoners out of the prisoner population of approximately 9,800 are also affected, and will have their release dates brought forward. In most cases this will only be by a matter of a few days or weeks rather than a significant period of time.

The Supreme Court made no ruling about compensation.

ENDS

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