The Aggravated Burglary: Current Sentencing Practices report [PDF] is based on sentencing remarks for 178 cases that involved at least one charge of aggravated burglary. It covers sentences that were handed down in the County Court of Victoria between July 2008 and June 2009.
Burglary involves entering a premises as a trespasser with the intention to steal anything in the premises or commit an offence involving assault or property damage. To be guilty of the offence, it is sufficient to enter the premises with the relevant intention (ie the offender does not have to actually carry out the intended theft, assault or property damage). It has a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. Aggravated burglary occurs if, at the time of the burglary, the offender either carried a weapon or knew that a person was in the premises (or was reckless as to the presence of a person in the premises). Aggravated burglary has a maximum penalty of 25 years, the second highest level of maximum penalty available in Victoria after life imprisonment.
In examining common features and key differences between the cases the Council concludes that there are found six distinct forms of aggravated burglary, of which five had sufficient numbers to perform meaningful analysis. Each had a distinct sentencing range.
The categories are -
• intimate relationship (15.7% of cases analysed)The Council comments that -
• sexual offence related (5.1%)
• confrontational (57.3%)
• robbery related (11.8%)
• theft related (3.4%)
• spontaneous encounters (1.7% or 3 cases)
The sentences imposed for these charges ranged from adjourned undertakings and fines to imprisonment for seven years. An immediate custodial sentence was the most frequently imposed sentence (55.2%). The median imprisonment term was two years. A wholly suspended sentence was the second most common sentence type (28.2% of charges) and the median term was two years.
Common features of aggravated burglaries sentenced in the higher courts were as follows:• The offender was usually a person already known to the victim (71.8% of charges) rather than a stranger.... Confrontational aggravated burglaries were by far the most common category, accounting for over half of the cases. They include cases such as ‘drug run-throughs’ (where there is a pre-existing dispute arising from illegal drug dealing and the offender breaks into premises to confront the other party and to take or damage property) and vigilante actions (for example, where the offender seeks to punish the victim because of a belief that the victim has done something wrong).
• The offence almost always occurred in residential premises (90.4%).
• The offender almost always committed at least one other offence (96.6%) – frequently this was an offence of causing injury or criminal damage.
• More than half of the offences involved at least one co-offender (59.0%).
• The offender was usually armed with a weapon (61.8%).
