It's more complex than the shock jocks tell you
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ozscott
Judges dont always get it right but overall our judicial system is the best in the world. That doesn't mean things can't be improved but mandatory sentencing and over involvement of politicians with a 3-4 year outlook only is not the way. There is a hell of a lot that goes into sentencing and it's an unenviable task.
Cheers
Hi Ozscott
Thanks for your posts. The reality is that sentencing is a complex area and it's far too easy for the tabloids and shock jocks to manufacture outrage. And sometimes the Court's decisions are based on reasoning that's counter-intuitive, which doesn't help and is rarely explained. For example, you'd think that all rape should draw a real life sentence, but legal scholars, including feminist legal scholars, have always opposed it. Why? Because the fear is that if someone knows that they're going to get a real life sentence for a rape then they'll figure that there's no reason not to murder their victim as well - because they won't be spending any longer in jail as a result. This is the basis for the "gradation" judgements that occasionally hit the press, where a judge is criticised for saying something like "this wasn't in the worst category of offending", when what was done does sound pretty awful. Cue outrage, from The Age in the case I'm thinking of, but sadly ignorant: the judges do need to not simply go to the maximum each time, to discourage criminals from doing the worst that they can. In a case where a friend survived an attempted rape/murder (but another woman didn't) the DPP actually appealed the sentence as too harsh - largely because they wanted to leave space for sentencing someone who did worse things. Although this particular criminal must have been well along the continuum.