29 Nov 2009

Discussion paper on boosting victims' rights due soon

2:26 pm on 29 November 2009

A discussion paper on enhancing the rights of victims of crime should be made public in the next few weeks, according to Justice Minister Simon Power.

It is almost a year since the Government promised that one of its priorities for 2009 would be restoring fairness to the justice system.

Mr Power says there are still questions to be answered about whether the current adversarial system system is appropriate for dealing with victims of sexual violence.

He says reforms could also include a special unit to oversee the victims' rights and upgrading registers to make sure that an offender is not paroled to an address close to a victim.