Trivial convictions, logic defying light sentences

COMMENT by BOB BEADMAN, Part Two

I suspect that statistics will confirm many of our trivial convictions would not result in a custodial sentence interstate.

Yet all too often a light sentence that defies logic is handed down in a serious case. That fails to pass the pub test.

We are told that we were unaware of all the mitigating circumstances. Perhaps so. But when the Director of Public Prosecutions appeals a sentence as “manifestly inadequate” (Sunday Territorian May 2024), something is clearly wrong.

Whatever, the perceptions of soft sentencing renew the crescendo for mandatory sentencing.

Mix in the controversial (excessive) use of bail provisions, and you can really get an argument going.

So, on the one hand there is a view that the courts are too harsh. The social reformers, a few academics, and the unaffected in the suburbs of our major capital cities subscribe to this view, I suspect.

And on the other hand, the victims of repeated break-ins, or home invasions, regularly by repeat offenders on bail, believe the courts are too lenient.

The victims of crime are screaming at the politicians to extend mandatory sentencing. There is no doubt that the police are frustrated at arresting the same offender multiple times.

I repeat. In a nutshell, social reformers are appalled by Mandatory Sentencing, but the victims of crime are disgusted by soft penalties, and bail, handed out by the courts.

How do you begin to reconcile those two opposite, deeply held views?

Parliaments are in the middle, and it is quite easy to see how the Legislatures arrive at mandatory sentencing.

More from Google about our incarceration costs: "Australia spends more than $5 billion per year, which amounts to over $330 per prisoner per day ... the per day cost of keeping a person under 18 in prison is $2700, totalling an annual cost per child of $985,500 and with 212 young people (129 are First Nations) presently in custody in NSW, the State is currently spending $208m per year on young people in prison."

Now governments, and their Treasuries are funny things. They can produce money out of a hat to meet the ever-expanding costs of imprisonment, and hospitalisation.

If an unfortunate is sentenced by a court to prison, or hospitalised by a doctor, government just meets the cost of prison or hospital. It is non-discretional. It cannot be denied or deferred until next year or the one after. There seems to be a bottomless impress account. In other words, not programmed, therefore not "expenditure".

It is extremely difficult to get approval to SPEND money in anticipation of a SAVING later. Like immunisation programs to save hospital costs. Or diversion programs to save gaol costs. Try asking for $10,000 now to fund a program that will save you $100,000 next financial year, and you strike the closed minds of money managers.

People who deal in numbers that add up and balance NOW do not think like that.

Not only are the costs of incarceration draining our finances, but the ineffectiveness of this practice as a deterrent is obvious.

A series of eye-opening reports published in March 2024 by the Justice Reform Initiative (which includes four former high court justices, three former police ministers and four former state premiers) said that gaoling people was deeply misguided:"The assumption is dangerously wrong. The idea that by dispatching men, women, and children to prison we are preventing them from committing further crime is deeply misguided. Instead, gaol is too often a training ground for violence, populated by a ready network of future co-conspirators.”

It is imperative that we change.

NEXT: Alternatives. Part one: Fighting crime: Is the law an ass?IMAGE at top: Google Earth image of the Alice Springs prison. The arrow shows the recently completed juvenile detention facility at a cost of $24m. "Juvie" images in the text are from Facebook.