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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-03-10 Daily Xml
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CRIMINAL ARREST WARRANTS

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (15:14): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the minister representing the Minister for Police a question regarding outstanding criminal arrest warrants.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: Recently I received a freedom of information response from the Courts Administration Authority indicating that our courts now have active criminal arrest warrants out on suspected offenders for a staggering 13,515 offences, including 308 District Court warrants and 37 Supreme Court warrants. This number means there is potentially an active arrest warrant for one in every 120 South Australians, on average.

When the article appeared today in The Advertiser regarding this information, the Minister for Police replied that the number of active warrants had halved in the past four years. Today, The Advertiser quotes the minister as follows:

'In 2007…there were 30,498 court issued warrants outstanding, the most recent (figures) show this has fallen to just over 13,500. That is a significant reduction…'

However, I have the data from 2007. In fact, it was my freedom of information request back then. The 2007 data was for all outstanding warrants, which would include various types of warrants, whereas the 2011 data only requested the number of outstanding criminal arrest warrants.

In short, the 2011 figure requested was a restricted data set and was limited to offenders who are evading justice and who are possibly dangerous to the community. The numbers are therefore not comparable. I am prepared to accept that the minister's contention that the number of active criminal arrest warrants has halved in the last four years was an inadvertent error on his part. My questions to the minister are:

1. Will the minister do the right thing and correct the record following this apparently inadvertent error?

2. Will the minister consider providing additional resources, allowing the implementation of a dedicated police task force to track down the thousands of potentially dangerous offenders in the community who are currently evading justice?

The Hon. B.V. FINNIGAN (Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for State/Local Government Relations, Minister for Gambling) (15:16): I thank the Hon. Mr Hood for his question. I will refer it to my colleague the Minister for Police in another place and bring back a response. I point out that, as we know, the day-to-day operations of the police, including matters such as forming a task force for a particular task or project, is the role of the police commissioner. We do not tell our police commissioner how to do his job. Obviously it is important that the police commissioner and the police be independent and be able to go about their work without political interference, despite the grubby allegations that sometimes come from members opposite.

I certainly assure the house, as I did earlier today, that we have record numbers of police in South Australia and we will be recruiting more over the next three years. The police make day-to-day decisions about prioritising tasks and about chasing down people with outstanding warrants—that is part of the work they do—and I am sure that, if there is any particular task force or project that needs to be implemented, that is something the police commissioner would consider. In relation to the particular numbers the honourable member has cited, I will refer the question to the Minister for Police.

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