It is about therapeutic justice.  This is a term that essentially refers to the use of non-traditional approaches to the sentencing of offenders – particularly where specific behavioural changes are targeted as the main way to reduce an individual’s prospects of re-offending.

Clearly, I would need more than the three minutes I have now to express all my views on this subject.

So, instead, I want to concentrate for now mainly on two entries in the Annual Reports of the Department of Justice over the last two financial years.

In the first of those Annual Reports, for 2017-18, on page 55, there is reference to the Department looking at successful court interventions (including the Drug Court, Assessment and Referral Court List, and the Court Integrated Services Program) to potentially expand therapeutic approaches.

Then it also cites funding of $1.1 million over two years that had been made available through the State Budget earlier that year.  It says that this funding was allocated for the development of a comprehensive model of integrated therapeutic approaches, in collaboration with justice and health partners – and initial consultations had commenced to develop such a model.

However, whilst the following year’s Annual Report again talks (on page 137) about the Department looking at successful court interventions (and refers to exactly the same courts and program), there is no update I can find on the use of that $1.1 million.

Now, for all I know, it was probably perfectly justifiably spent by that point – or was still in the process of being spent.  It certainly won’t be either the first or the last time that I’ve missed an eminently reasonable explanation for something like this.

But that’s my main point here.  In everything on the public record at which I’ve looked, I can’t find any obvious way so far of accounting for exactly what has happened to this $1.1 million.

I also realise this money was far from a new or an isolated item of expenditure on therapeutic justice in Victoria, overall.

However, I am keen to trace what happened specifically to that $1.1 million in spending.

The action I therefore seek from the Attorney-General is that she indicate what the nature, the results (and the evaluation) of that expenditure so far have been.  Equally, I would like to know whether any of this money is still left to be spent in the future (and, if so, on what it will be spent, precisely).