IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA	Revised
(Not) Restricted
Suitable for publication	
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR 23-01109

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS		
		
v		
		
ISSAC DAVOREN		

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JUDGE:	HER HONOUR JUDGE HAWKINS	
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne	
DATE OF HEARING:	15 October 2024	
DATE OF SENTENCE:	22 October 2024	
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Davoren	
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2024] VCC 1675	

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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APPEARANCES:
	Counsel	Solicitors	
For the Crown	Ms R. Barrett	Director of Public Prosecutions	
			
For the Accused	Ms A. Addamo	Leanne Warren & Associates	

HER HONOUR:
1	Mr Davoren, I am now going to sentence you in respect of your breach of a Community Correction Order.  Following your plea of guilty to one charge of attempted aggravated burglary, on 1 December 2023 I sentenced you on  to a total effective sentence of nine months' imprisonment and a Community Correction Order (CCO) of 18 months' duration, which has what I will describe as therapeutic conditions only. That order will expire in July 2025.
2	I note that on the same day you were sentenced by the Magistrates' Court to a term of imprisonment which was wholly concurrent with the sentence I had imposed.
3	You were subsequently convicted in the Magistrates' Court of six offences, including affray and damaging property. These offences were committed during the operational period of the CCO I had imposed, and you were sentenced to a further 14 days' imprisonment by the Horsham Magistrates' Court on 6 May this year.
4	You have today, or last week in fact, pleaded guilty to contravening the CCO I imposed by committing those further offences, and also by failing to comply with the conditions of the CCO.
5	I have received an initial contravention package and an updated report from Corrections about the progress that you have made on the order.  They report that the CCO did not have a meaningful impact upon you and did not operate to protect the community. Accordingly, the prosecution submitted to the court that I ought to cancel the CCO and resentence you in respect of the original offending.
6	The progress that you made on the CCO is outlined in the Corrections Addendum Report dated 19 September of this year.  The report noted that you have not attend supervision appointments with Horsham Community Corrections since 3 July this year.  You previously presented with intimidating behaviour towards Corrections staff, including mimicking the loading of a firearm, leaning over the table to reveal your patch tattoo, and attempting to take a photograph of a staff member.
7	You were reassessed for your suitability to be placed on a further order on 4 July 2024. 
8	You were assessed as unsuitable to be placed on a further CCO, partially due to the behaviour you demonstrated towards Corrections staff during previous opportunities on the order, but also based on your expressed desire not to engage in further treatment and rehabilitation.
9	The order I placed you on required you to receive mental health treatment and rehabilitation. You have not provided any evidence to Horsham Corrections to support that you are receiving mental health support.  
10	I adjourned the matter to today to allow your solicitors to obtain any evidence of treatment that you are presently receiving. Your solicitors made attempts to obtain letters of confirmation from the providers you nominated but no material was forthcoming.  I do have regard to the letter from Grampians Community Health which speaks of your participation,  but I note that they were not in receipt of the Corrections report outlining your conduct with Horsham Community Corrections.  Without the author of that report attending court and presenting to be cross-examined, I cannot place a great deal of weight upon her opinion about your prospects of rehabilitation, and I view those prospects as guarded.
11	As part of your CCO you failed to attend urine drug screening appointments in August and September of this year, and your drug screening in September indicated that you had been using amphetamine substances and benzodiazepines.  
12	Whilst your overall engagement with Corrections was initially consistent, or was reported as consistent yet not meaningful, your non-compliance was linked to a failure to attend AOD counselling and mental health counselling.  
13	Of concern is also that you failed to notify Corrections of your updated address, and when they went to check on the address you had provided it appeared to be vacant.
14	The maximum penalty for the index offending, being a charge of attempted aggravated burglary, is 20 years imprisonment.  Whilst attempted aggravated burglary is an inherently serious offence, I concluded in my reasons for sentence that you were not the main aggressor in the offending, however, neither were you a passive bystander; you entered the property via a window that had been smashed by a co-offender, and you let two others into the property with you. 
15	I viewed the footage of that incident in court prior to sentencing you and I concluded that you were an active participant in the offending but determined that your offending was a relatively low-level example of that offence type.
16	You were 31 at the time of offending and are now 33.  You are a New Zealand citizen and identify as Maori.  You were raised in New Zealand by your parents and when you were 10 years old your father went to East Timor to serve with the New Zealand Army for a few years.  Your father’s absence caused stress to you and your mother, and your maternal grandparents stepped in to assist the family.
17	I have regard to your disclosures of childhood abuse, and also your family history of heavy alcohol consumption.  I understand you are the father of 
six children, and you had all of those children with your partner Rapeka.  I was told on a previous occasion that you fell into a cycle of criminal behaviour when you were living in New Zealand and you served a term of imprisonment in New Zealand, before moving to Australia with the hope of breaking the cycle of offending.
18	You are currently on a visa which is set to expire in 2027.  Your children born in New Zealand have dual citizenship, and you have one child born in Australia who is an Australian citizen. 
19	I was told on the plea to the index offending that the death of your grandmother in 2020 led to a downward spiral where you recommenced significant methamphetamine and other drug and alcohol use, and this has escalated significantly since that time.  
20	You came to Australia in 2017 and began to accrue convictions in 2021.  Those convictions included a two-month sentence of imprisonment for a police pursuit and family violence offending.  Your New Zealand criminal record discloses a considerable history, including priors for violence and weapons offences.  
21	When I sentenced you originally in respect of the index offending, I was told that you faced potential deportation as a result of your offending.  I assume that that remains a live risk.  I have regard to that in sentencing you.
22	Your co-accused, Mr Stewart, was sentenced by His Honour Judge Johns in the Koori Court at Latrobe Valley on 8 September 2023 to one charge of attempted aggravated burglary, one charge of make threat to kill, and one charge of destroying property, together with the summary offences of carrying a controlled weapon and committing indictable offences whilst on bail.  
Mr Stewart was convicted and sentenced to nine months imprisonment with an 18- month therapeutic style Community Correction Order.
23	In considering the issue of parity I had regard to the differences and similarities between you and Mr Stewart.  I rely on those observations I made regarding parity in my original reasons for sentence.  In short compass, I concluded that you played a lesser role in the offending than the principal, but that there were greater mitigatory factors which applied to Mr Stewart, and I therefore concluded that the principle of general deterrence ought be given a greater weight in sentencing you than it did for him.
24	And so I, on balance, concluded that in all of the circumstances it would be appropriate to sentence you in a similar fashion to Mr Stewart.  However, there are significant differences in your respective positions, and I afforded you an opportunity to undertake a therapeutic CCO to address your longstanding alcohol and drug issues, and your mental health. You have failed to take advantage of the opportunity presented to you and accordingly I propose to resentence you in respect of the index offending.
25	In so doing, I have regard to the progress you made on the CCO in accordance with the principle in Liu's case. 
26	This CCO contravention has had multiple adjournments and I have provided you the opportunity to obtain legal representation and to obtain further material in support of your plea.  Ultimately little has been forthcoming.
27	Accordingly, Mr Davoren, on the index offending I resentence you as follows:  You have admitted to breaching the CCO and I find that breach proven, record a conviction, and impose a fine of $1,000.  
28	On Charge 1 of the index offending, your CCO is cancelled and in its place I convict and sentence you to 12- months imprisonment.
29	When I previously sentenced you, I declared 246 days of pre-sentence detention as having been served.  I noted that you had a further 61 days of 
pre-sentence detention available to you, and in the time since I remanded you, you have accrued a further six days of pre-sentence detention.  That means you have available to you a total of 313 days of pre-sentence detention which I declare as having already been served in respect of this sentence, and I order that such declaration and its details be entered into the court records.
30	Pursuant to s6AAA of the Sentencing Act I indicate that had you pleaded not guilty and been found guilty after trial I would have sentenced you to a term of two years and six months imprisonment with a non-parole period of 
20 months.
31	I refer to and repeat the extended reasons for sentence, in particular sentencing principles, that I outlined in the sentence I originally imposed in respect of the index offending.  
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