MUCH has been made of the judiciary’s apparent leniency when it comes to sentencing.
Shrill commentary in some sections of the national media has added nothing to the debate and has left the public in the dark.
Ignorance of the machinery of the judiciary and sentencing in particular is the main reason why the ‘‘lock them up and throw away the key’’ sentiment prevails.
It is trendy to claim that the judiciary is ‘‘out of touch’’ but far less popular to suggest that this view is nonsense, despite the latter being absolutely correct.
It may come as a surprise to the hang ‘em high brigade, but judges and magistrates do not operate in a vacuum nor are they ignorant of the consequences of crime or how best to punish it.
Who better to pass an appropriate sentence than someone who has been around crime and criminals all their working lives?
Take Victorian judge Frank Vincent for instance.
Addressing last month’s much-heralded, but completely pointless, media-driven public forum on sentencing in Melbourne, he told how he had worked in the criminal justice system for half a century.
Indeed, you might say he has led a life of crime having interviewed between 10,000-12,000 prisoners and having made determinations affecting between 30,000-40,000 years of incarceration.
The point of course is that Justice Vincent and people like him — members of the judiciary — understand better than anyone what an appropriate sentence might look like.
Justice Vincent has dealt with a range of offenders, from the unfortunate, the mentally ill, the desperate, or the plain stupid to the scheming, the nasty and the downright evil.
And he has dealt with each and every one of them differently.
For that is the point, is it not? No two cases are the same. Why? Because no two people are the same.
A crime committed by someone who is intellectually disabled or mentally impaired must be considered differently to a crime committed deliberately by the criminally culpable.
If we just stop and think for a moment, even the dullest brain would surely agree that it is neither appropriate nor common sense to apply the one-rule-fits-all approach.
The public must be protected from violent offenders but we must also be mindful of the fact that jails are universities of crime, particularly for the young and impressionable.
Non-custodial and community based sentences for offenders who are capable of rehabilitation are a better course of action than simply imposing a sentence of six months behind bars.
The system also allows for redress if a sentence is perceived to be too lenient or too harsh. In the main, it works.
Sadly, many in the community are basing their opinions of the system on increased media coverage and the popular idea that crime is on the rise and ever more violent.
The truth is that crimes against the person in Victoria have consistently fallen over the past decade, but the sensationalist reporting of it has increased enormously.
It is most unlikely that anyone in the judiciary will take the slightest bit of notice of calls in the tabloid press for harsher sentencing and far more likely that they will continue to sentence each case on its merits, as they should.
Where they might make some headway in improving public perception about their motives would be to educate.
The Sentencing Advisory Council (yes, there is one) has undertaken a great deal of research on the issue and unsurprisingly has discovered that there are yawning gaps between the public’s understanding of the sentencing system and reality.
However, further research has shown that when people have the same information as the court they tend to impose the same sentence or even a more lenient one.
If judges want the public to better understand how they arrived at a decision they should speak out more, if only to demonstrate the manner in which they try to arrive at the correct judgement, not the most popular one.
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