We would like to hear from you on areas of sentencing law that we are reviewing. Public contributions to a review are called submissions. Submissions help to provide us with the information and opinions we need to write our reports and to recommend reform.
This page contains general information about writing a submission and the submission process. For information and materials relating to a specific review please visit our current projects page.
A submission may be as short or as long as you like. It may contain facts, opinions, arguments or recommendations. It may cover all the points in the terms of reference or only some of them, depending on what interests you. Supporting documents may be attached.
You do not need legal qualifications to make a submission, although we welcome input from the legal community.
When writing a submission there is no prescribed format. However, submissions are usually made in response to a call for preliminary submissions, consultation papers or question papers. We recommend using the consultation documents to help guide your submission.
Submissions should be emailed to us at sentencingcouncil@dcj.nsw.gov.au.
The final date for making a submission will vary depending on the project.
We generally publish submissions on our website and refer to them in our publications.
Please let us know if you do not want us to publish your submission, or if you want us to treat all or part of it as confidential.
We will endeavour to respect your request, but the law provides some cases where we are required or authorised to disclose information. In particular we may be required to disclose your information under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (NSW).
In other words, we will do our best to keep your information confidential if you ask us to do so, but we cannot promise to do so, and sometimes the law or the public interest says we must disclose your information to someone else.
14 May 2024
We acknowledge Aboriginal people as the First Nations Peoples of NSW and pay our respects to Elders past, present and future. We acknowledge the ongoing connection Aboriginal people have to this land and recognise Aboriginal people as the original custodians of this land.