Master the legal frameworks, statutory guidelines, and strategic advocacy tactics essential for navigating judicial discretion and shaping criminal sentencing outcomes.
Sentencing sits at the centre of criminal justice, requiring courts to balance competing purposes including punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, denunciation, community protection, and proportionality. It is also one of the most dynamic and scrutinised areas of law, continually shaped by legislative reform, appellate authority, and shifting public expectations.
“Foundations of Sentencing Practice” provides a structured introduction to sentencing principles and their application in real-world legal decision-making. The session explores how sentencing frameworks operate in practice, the policy considerations that influence reform, and the tensions that arise when courts are required to individualise justice within increasingly complex statutory environments.
Designed for practitioners and justice system professionals, this course builds both doctrinal understanding and practical advocacy skills. Participants will gain insight into sentencing submissions, key principles such as totality and parsimony, and the broader forces shaping sentencing reform and judicial discretion.
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Emeritus Professor | Monash University
Arie Freiberg is an Emeritus Professor at Monash University. He was Dean of the Faculty Law at Monash University between 2004 and 2012. Before this, he was Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne in 2003. He was appointed to the Foundation Chair of Criminology at the University of Melbourne in January 1991 where he served as Head of the Department of Criminology between January 1992 and June 2002. In 2013 he was appointed an Emeritus Professor of the University. He graduated from the University of Melbourne with an honours degree in Law and a Diploma in Criminology in 1972 and holds a Master of Laws degree from Monash University. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Melbourne in 2001 and is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Law. Between 1996 and 1998, he was President of the Australian and New Zealand Society. In 2009 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his service to law, particularly in the fields of criminology and reform related to sentencing, legal education and academic leadership. His particular areas of expertise are sentencing, non-adversarial justice and regulation. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School (2014) and Tel Aviv University (2008) and has served as a consultant to the Federal, Victorian, South Australian and Western Australian governments on sentencing matters as well as the Australian and South African Law Reform Commissions. In 2015 he consulted to the Royal Commission on Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Contexts on sentencing issues and in 2016 he was a consultant to the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General on drug courts. He has also consulted for a number of state government agencies and departments on regulatory reform. In July 2004, he was appointed inaugural Chair of the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council and served until October 2022. Between 2013 and 2021 he was Chair of the Tasmanian Sentencing Advisory Council. He is a member of the Council of the the Judicial College of Victoria. Between 2017 and June 2018 was a member of the Interim Advisory Board of the Victorian Environment Protection Authority. In 2020 he was appointed to the Board of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency and between 2021 and 2025 he was a member of Energy Safe Victoria's Future Trends Advisory Committee. He has authored around 190 publications in areas such as sentencing, confiscation of proceeds of crime, tax compliance, corporate crime, juries, juvenile justice, sanctions, victimology, superannuation fraud, trust in criminal justice, commercial confidentiality in corrections, dangerous offenders, the role of emotion in criminal justice and public policy, drug courts, problem-oriented courts, non-adversarial justice, environment protection, regulatory theory and trauma-informed regulation.
