The broadest inquiry into Victoria's legal system for nearly 30 years will be conducted over the next two years after MP Tania Maxwell won the support of Parliament on Wednesday.
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Her motion on Wednesday for the Legal and Social Issues Committee to conduct an inquiry was supported unanimously.
It will look into Victoria's growing prison population, strategies to reduce recidivism and the judicial appointment processes.
Ms Maxwell, the Wangaratta-based Derryn Hinch's Justice Party MP, said she hoped the inquiry would "identify meaningful solutions to a number of serious and enduring problems".
"Victorians will never feel entirely safe or secure, nor appropriately protected from the worst effects of crime, if our society is not based on solid legal foundations and values," she said.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics numbers state that the number of people in custody in Victoria has increased by more than 200 per cent over the past 21 years and 43 per cent end up back in custody within two years of being released.
"Each of those numbers is staggering," Ms Maxwell said.
"They also need to be set in the context of what is widely understood to be substantial under-reporting of crime in many areas, particularly rural towns.
"We should be even more worried about what a potential continuation of these trends will mean in the future."
The MP said some inmates are not imprisoned long enough to keep the community safe, but the inquiry should also investigate early intervention programs to divert youths in particular from criminal offending.
She said she wanted to hear from victims about the impacts they faced from the court process.
While Ms Maxwell did not mention George Pell by name, she wanted the issue of a Victorian jury verdict being overturned to also be part of the inquiry.
"It would also be remiss of me to complete this speech without reflecting on the point that our state clearly does have some particularly difficult questions to contemplate here after the recent overturning of a succession of Victorian decisions on appeal to the High Court," Ms Maxwell stated.
"We need to better honour the principle that the main beneficiaries of any serious, self-respecting justice system should always be those who abide by the law rather than those who break it.
"Frankly, we can't afford much more loss of community faith in a Victorian system that has both long and widely been perceived as tilting the scales of justice too heavily in favour of the perpetrators of crimes over their victims."
The committee will need to deliver a report by February 2022.
Attorney-General Jill Hennessy said she would be happy to consider the upper house committee's findings.