INADEQUATE SENTENCES

WE see yet again where an attorneygeneral, this time in NSW, has had to lodge an appeal against a decision of a court, the latest being the release from custody of a child killer and paedophile. He said there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

The courts do not formulate legislation, that is the prerogative of the elected governments and if a sentence is in-adequate then it is down to the ideological weakness of the legislators enacting laws allowing this to happen. There is too much concern for the rights of the offender, often to the detriment of giving justice to the victim and their families. Justice actually concerns both sides of the coin.

Alongside maximum sentences there should be mandatory minimums in place in law so that if there is a minimum of 10 years for, as example, murder, no judge can had down a sentence of five. Alongside that there should be an overriding law that stipulates 75 per cent of a sentence, to the day, must be served before parole can be applied for or granted. If you are sentenced to 15 you must do 11 and a quarter.

Before there was an un-elected interfering body such as the United Nations telling countries what they can and cannot do, legislation as enacted by the parliaments decreed what would be. When Ned Kelly was rightly hanged in 1880 the sentence for murder, without options, was death. The judge, Redmond Barry, had no discretion but to sentence Kelly to hang.

That said we should also have capital punishment again on our statutes, as a sentencing pathway against never to be released. The severity and viciousness of the offender’s actions would be the deciding factor in the decision, such as when a child was involved.

Attorney-generals on numerous occasions have had to turn around following a manifestly in-adequate sentence and appeal for it to be increased. This would not be needed if the politicians had the backbone to legislate mandatory minimum sentences.

ROGER DESHON, Toowoomba