Australia's Courts are too soft.

[Amakusa]

Deserve has got nothing to do with it. The court system isn't designed for vengeance.

And vengeance has nothing to do with whether or not they deserve a punishment. A person commits a crime, they owe a debt, either to a victim or to society, and the standard way of paying off this debt is with prison.

In the case of murder, where a proper debt is impossible to determine (what is the value of human life?), a person has proved that they cannot function in society the moment they murder a person. This is why Life and Death sentences are given for murders; not to deter people, and not really even for vengeance, but rather because this person has proven that they cannot live in normal society without killing, so we must remove them.

And now, we get back to how this is relevant to the topic at hand. This person obviously can't live in proper society; she killed her 8 year old daughter, literally torturing her to death. And I'm unsure about the Australian legal system, but based on what I know of MY legal system, the fact that she was sent to "prison" and not a mental institute meant that her mental health wasn't factored in much at all. So the question remains; do the Aussie courts believe that her debt is paid after only 7 years? How can she be expected to return to society after that?

Actually the point of jail is to remove the person from society and rehabilitate them. Australia doesn't have the death penalty. So when someone is killed, the death sentence is not an option. (And in the case with countries with the death penalty, there also has been wrongful conviction where innocent people have been on death row and found innocent later from dna.)

Rehabilitation is the point in the Australian jurisdiction. There are programs in the prison system determined to reduced risk behaviour etc and she will be required to undertake them if she ever wants to be eligible for parole.

Also you have no idea why the judge gave the length of the sentence. The sentence that a judge gives it determined on a scale and i would need the transcript of the sentencing before i could comment. They consider many factors. Can the person be rehabilitated? Did they co operate and confess? Did they enter into a plea bargain. I want to see the actual decision making of the judge before i say whether or on not that is a proper sentence.

As to whether she is fine to return to society after her time is served, that depends on the the programs in the jail and the parole board which is pointless to speculate at this time.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Beat a kid with a vacuum cleaner - 7 years.
download a movie - 15 years.

Out of interest, who has been convicted in Australia for 15 years for downloading a movie? For personal use, that is, not a distributor.

 

[Amakusa]

Beat a kid with a vacuum cleaner - 7 years.
download a movie - 15 years.

Out of interest, who has been convicted in Australia for 15 years for downloading a movie? For personal use, that is, not a distributor.

Tbi i'm not sure, if it has happened, there has been no coverage or comment on it.

As to why we have that sentence of 15 years. I think it's because when australia signed the Bilateral trade agreement with the USA (i think in the late 90 or early 00s) we had to adopt the penalty and copyright laws of the USA, and adjusted the law books here accordingly. However i'm not 100% sure on that. So that higher sentence might be because of the laws standards that were imported.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Beat a kid with a vacuum cleaner - 7 years.
download a movie - 15 years.

Out of interest, who has been convicted in Australia for 15 years for downloading a movie? For personal use, that is, not a distributor.

Er...does it matter if they are a distributor? Making a few bucks off a pirated movie is worse than beating a child to death?

Well, I'm not sure that anyone has gotten 15 years for distributing, but I am sure nobody has gotten 15 years for downloading.

 

[Amakusa]

Someone's clearly been watching some A Current Affair or Today Tonight. Maybe even the dreaded 60 Minutes...

That made me laugh. Or maybe radio stations like 2GB heh.

 

[MrPhyntch]

Actually the point of jail is to remove the person from society and rehabilitate them. Australia doesn't have the death penalty. So when someone is killed, the death sentence is not an option. (And in the case with countries with the death penalty, there also has been wrongful conviction where innocent people have been on death row and found innocent later from dna.)

Rehabilitation is the point in the Australian jurisdiction. There are programs in the prison system determined to reduced risk behaviour etc and she will be required to undertake them if she ever wants to be eligible for parole.

Also you have no idea why the judge gave the length of the sentence. The sentence that a judge gives it determined on a scale and i would need the transcript of the sentencing before i could comment. They consider many factors. Can the person be rehabilitated? Did they co operate and confess? Did they enter into a plea bargain. It's all very easy to bash a judge because there is no transcript as to why they have come that sentencing decision.

I'm just curious how this rehabilitation works. I know for a fact that even with the best programs it doesn't work very often in the United States, short of prisoners finding religion (and even that one is iffy on success rate). After all, you're cooping people up in close quarters with very little to do for long periods of time and surrounding them with more people who are there for murder and violence. If it works then that is great, maybe the US could learn something from Australia in that regard. I just have my doubts from here.

Also, I didn't mean to say that the death penalty SHOULD be used, and I apologize if it sounded that way. I simply meant to explain WHY it existed. That the death penalty is one way to remove a person from society. And I also am scared about its over-use and the possibility of wrongful conviction. I only support its use in the case of undeniable proof (minimum 3 reliable witnesses, video footage, etc) AND more than one killing (first offense shouldn't be immediate death. That sounds like vengeance to me). But let's not turn this into an argument about the death penalty, I've probably already said too much on the subject.

And no, I don't know why the judge only gave 7 years, except in that it was the Prosecutor who sought that penalty. I'm less angry about the judge than the prosecutor. After all, those deals and bargains you mentioned, at least here in the US, are made with the prosecution, not the judge, and it's traditional to not give a harsher sentence than what the prosecution seeks. So I'm curious as to what kind of deal could have been made to get her out of torturing and killing her daughter. As far as I'm concerned there's very little short of outing a terrorist threat to blow up a train or plane or something that would be worth reducing to 7 years. But I think that's the point of this thread in the first place; that there shouldn't be anything worth getting that low of a sentence for what she did.

 

[chikusho]

snip

There's clearly not enough information in this article to know whether or not the sentence was appropriate or not.

It does not need to work as a deterant. it needs to work as punishment.

That's an extremely unproductive and backwards way of thinking.

as much as I agree that people should be punished for crimes. There is no serious research showing it has any effect on reducing that types of crimes. There is the clear point of justice, but it doesn't actually `help´ to be ´tough on crime´

so your saying that police is completely useless and we woudl have same amount of crimes commited without them?

Police work to prevent and investigate crime. What happens after sentencing is completely out of their hands, so it's irrelevant to this matter.
He's saying the -prison system as punishment- is an ineffective way to reduce crime. However, the -prison system as rehabilitation- has had some great successes, just as an example.

You dont need prison time for rapists. there are ways to prevent them from repeating their offence.

You mean, the death penalty?

 

[Dryk]

Man I thought this thread was going to be about Adelaidean judges hand out suspended sentences like candy.

It's very possible the just didn't have enough evidence to convict for murder and had to settle for manslaughter.

The intent was obviously just to give her daughter a savage beating and not kill her. It's not too surprising they could only get manslaughter.

 

[dumbseizure]

Deserve has got nothing to do with it. The court system isn't designed for vengeance.

And vengeance has nothing to do with whether or not they deserve a punishment. A person commits a crime, they owe a debt, either to a victim or to society, and the standard way of paying off this debt is with prison.

In the case of murder, where a proper debt is impossible to determine (what is the value of human life?), a person has proved that they cannot function in society the moment they murder a person. This is why Life and Death sentences are given for murders; not to deter people, and not really even for vengeance, but rather because this person has proven that they cannot live in normal society without killing, so we must remove them.

And now, we get back to how this is relevant to the topic at hand. This person obviously can't live in proper society; she killed her 8 year old daughter, literally torturing her to death. And I'm unsure about the Australian legal system, but based on what I know of MY legal system, the fact that she was sent to "prison" and not a mental institute meant that her mental health wasn't factored in much at all. So the question remains; do the Aussie courts believe that her debt is paid after only 7 years? How can she be expected to return to society after that?

Actually the point of jail is to remove the person from society and rehabilitate them. Australia doesn't have the death penalty. So when someone is killed, the death sentence is not an option. (And in the case with countries with the death penalty, there also has been wrongful conviction where innocent people have been on death row and found innocent later from dna.)

Rehabilitation is the point in the Australian jurisdiction. There are programs in the prison system determined to reduced risk behaviour etc and she will be required to undertake them if she ever wants to be eligible for parole.

Also you have no idea why the judge gave the length of the sentence. The sentence that a judge gives it determined on a scale and i would need the transcript of the sentencing before i could comment. They consider many factors. Can the person be rehabilitated? Did they co operate and confess? Did they enter into a plea bargain. I want to see the actual decision making of the judge before i say whether or on not that is a proper sentence.

As to whether she is fine to return to society after her time is served, that depends on the the programs in the jail and the parole board which is pointless to speculate at this time.

Completely this.

No one can comment on the ruling or sentencing of the case from the tiny amount of information that was provided in that article.

So while someone may see it as an "injustice" she only got 7 years, obviously something was revealed in the courts to make the judge come to that decision.

Also, she was charged with manslaughter, not murder like some people are saying, I also am unsure why until I can read the court transcript myself.

 

[Something Amyss]

It shows how unbelievably unjust the latter is by comparison.

By comparison to laws that you yourself admit are harsh.

That I would ediorialise as ridiculously harsh.

That's a bad way of demonstrating the courts are soft, the law is bad, or that the punishment is too lenient. It's ridiculous.

I'd argue, even, that comparing it to harsh and draconian laws trivialises the death of the child and the actions of the mom.

However, looking at the case, I also note this was a woman believed to be mentally ill. So we're sending crazy people to jail for crazy acts instead of rehabilitating them. Yay.

yeah, but that doesn't mean she didn't DESERVE a harsher sentence.

To what end? Will it bring her child back?

It does not need to work as a deterant. it needs to work as punishment.

Especially viable since she's crazy. I'm sure she will learn to not be crazy from her punishment.

You should see some of the case we get here in Canada... 18 mouth for a pedophile who abused children for 18 years for exemple...

[citation needed]

Better than the UK, where you can rape someone, admit to it, and get no time in jail at all so long as you were raised to think of women as objects.

I'm gonna throw a [citation needed] down here, too. I'm not saying these things don't happen, but I would like to see some sort of evidence that they do.

You'd be amazed at how often complete works of fiction get spread as true stories on the internet.

On second thought, if you're on the internet, you probably know that by now.

 

[Nazulu]

Yeah, I'm beginning to think they aren't handing out proper punishments either. If this was the first time I heard this I would just say "we don't know enough to say it was soft", but I've heard this type of thing a lot over the last couple of years, and I'm not even looking for it. Same cases again and again, someone kills someone else and they usually get under 10 years, which is fuck all really.

I don't know enough about the courts altogether since I've never been to one, but something doesn't seem right about it.

 

[Amakusa]

Actually the point of jail is to remove the person from society and rehabilitate them. Australia doesn't have the death penalty. So when someone is killed, the death sentence is not an option. (And in the case with countries with the death penalty, there also has been wrongful conviction where innocent people have been on death row and found innocent later from dna.)

Rehabilitation is the point in the Australian jurisdiction. There are programs in the prison system determined to reduced risk behaviour etc and she will be required to undertake them if she ever wants to be eligible for parole.

Also you have no idea why the judge gave the length of the sentence. The sentence that a judge gives it determined on a scale and i would need the transcript of the sentencing before i could comment. They consider many factors. Can the person be rehabilitated? Did they co operate and confess? Did they enter into a plea bargain. It's all very easy to bash a judge because there is no transcript as to why they have come that sentencing decision.

I'm just curious how this rehabilitation works. I know for a fact that even with the best programs it doesn't work very often in the United States, short of prisoners finding religion (and even that one is iffy on success rate). After all, you're cooping people up in close quarters with very little to do for long periods of time and surrounding them with more people who are there for murder and violence. If it works then that is great, maybe the US could learn something from Australia in that regard. I just have my doubts from here.

Also, I didn't mean to say that the death penalty SHOULD be used, and I apologize if it sounded that way. I simply meant to explain WHY it existed. That the death penalty is one way to remove a person from society. And I also am scared about its over-use and the possibility of wrongful conviction. I only support its use in the case of undeniable proof (minimum 3 reliable witnesses, video footage, etc) AND more than one killing (first offense shouldn't be immediate death. That sounds like vengeance to me). But let's not turn this into an argument about the death penalty, I've probably already said too much on the subject.

And no, I don't know why the judge only gave 7 years, except in that it was the Prosecutor who sought that penalty. I'm less angry about the judge than the prosecutor. After all, those deals and bargains you mentioned, at least here in the US, are made with the prosecution, not the judge, and it's traditional to not give a harsher sentence than what the prosecution seeks. So I'm curious as to what kind of deal could have been made to get her out of torturing and killing her daughter. As far as I'm concerned there's very little short of outing a terrorist threat to blow up a train or plane or something that would be worth reducing to 7 years. But I think that's the point of this thread in the first place; that there shouldn't be anything worth getting that low of a sentence for what she did.

Okay lets see.

Paragraph 1)
I'm not a expert on Penology, so my knowledge wouldn't be as detailed as someone who has studied that subject intensively. From what I do know, prisons have programs and generally they are targeted towards certain groups based on their risk factor. To be eligible for parole for example you would have to have satisfied certain programs and satisfy the parole board that your not a risk. (It's not 100% foolproof, there have been really bad parole violations) As for recidivism and rehabilitation, it depends on how the programs are designed with proper follow up and how much support they have in prison and more importantly once they leave prison. For example a person that has good support network outside prison, is able to find work, doesn't go back to the old environment that cause the offending (same neighbourhood, bad friends etc) is less likely to fall back into recidivism that someone that is totally ignored once released. With the programs themselves, generally funding is an issue and also how long do you have to wait for the program to be deemed as a success and how success is defined are issues.


Paragraph 2)
Concerning your point about the death penalty, that fine. I won't say much more on that. Fair enough.

Paragraph 3)
With the plea bargaining and all that, yeah the prosecution would take care of that. But the judge himself/herself is not bound by that and would take that as a factor. The judge would also take into other factors that would have been mentioned in the case. Judges here have discretion unless there is legislation to forbids them to excise it. That news clip doesn't take into account the reasoning or other issues that would of been relevant to the decision making process for the sentence. (Basically it's under resourced reporting with no specialised legal reporters due to changing nature of media but that is irrelevant here).

 

[MrPhyntch]

He's saying the -prison system as punishment- is an ineffective way to reduce crime. However, the -prison system as rehabilitation- has had some great successes, just as an example.

Just curious, can you show me any evidence of this? Last I heard, prison rehab was basically a complete joke. For a number of reasons:

A) Very hard to break old habits
B) Very hard to cut all ties to the old criminal life
C) You're stuffing people in a box full of murderers and rapists, and no one has their general creature comforts, this tends to harden people up a bit much to be rehabilitated.
D) When people try to subvert the above, they turn prisons into vacation homes that the poor and downtrodden, or just lazy in some cases, can choose to live in rent-free for 5 to 10 years at a time for fairly small stuff on repeat convictions.

Prison rehabilitation would be the best solution, but to my knowledge it just doesn't work, as the prison environment doesn't exactly lend itself to rehabilitating. You get too soft and you get shanked, and when that's not a concern people are generally to comfy to want to rehabilitate.

EDIT to respond to above post, which was posted while I was typing:

I'm more interested in success rates, really. Like you said, getting that good environment is very important to rehabilitating a person, and as I said, it's a very delicate balance that's very hard to achieve. On top of that, it costs a ton of money that would otherwise be going to things like schools. While I'm all for helping everyone in need, including those who have fallen from society's graces (like criminals), if the success rates aren't there, we're probably better pushing that money into other places.

 

[lacktheknack]

I've been wary of First World justice ever since I found out that, here in Canada, you can be charged for several things and serve all the prison sentences at the same time.

Read that a few times.

 

[Talvrae]

You should see some of the case we get here in Canada... 18 mouth for a pedophile who abused children for 18 years for exemple...

[citation needed]

Don,t have the specific story fresh, but well here an article on the subject of canada being soft on child abuse crime: http://c2cjournal.ca/2013/03/why-are-canada%E2%80%99s-courts-soft-on-sexual-crimes-against-children/

you can read thouse too
http://www.straight.com/blogra/canadian-justice-system-so-broken-its-criminal
http://www.mikesanddislikes.com/society_justice_law_screw_remorsefulness_canadian_justice_rant

 

[Thaluikhain]

There was a study down in Tasmania on jurors. They found that juries were most often satisfied by the punishment given in the trials they were involved in, where they heard all the evidence.

However, they were much less often satisfied by the punishments given in trials they'd only read about in the papers.

 

[Amakusa]

There was a study down in Tasmania on jurors. They found that juries were most often satisfied by the punishment given in the trials they were involved in, where they heard all the evidence.

However, they were much less often satisfied by the punishments given in trials they'd only read about in the papers.

here you go, here is a link to it for those interested.

Public judgement on sentencing: Final results from the Tasmanian Jury Sentencing Study
Kate Warner, Julia Davis, Maggie Walter,Rebecca Bradfield and Rachel Vermey

http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/A/B/7/%7BAB703D46-E913-4384-B3DB-646DC27EF2D3%7Dtandi407.pdf

 

[william12123]

Strazdas:

It does not need to work as a deterant. it needs to work as punishment.

This makes no sense to me. It's like saying an airplane isn't a form of transportation. The only purpose of prison sentencing is as a deterrent. Why do you send someone to prison? To convince them that the alternative is better. There are a few justifications for punishment (retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation according to the wikipedia page). However, retribution is socially unacceptable. Incapacitation only really applies to those who get a death sentence. What we're left with is rehabilitation and deterrence.

Considering the original comment was made about harsher sentences, I don't see how harsher sentences could act as anything other than a deterrent. The thing about rehabilitation is that no specific sentence is appropriate. It's as likely to take a month as never work at all.

As I understand it, prison sentencing (as a punishment) can serve as nothing other than a deterrent. Ideally, sentences would be "go to prison until you're fit to become a productive member of society again". Everything else (prison time, fines) is only there to convince you not to do the crime.

 

[chikusho]

He's saying the -prison system as punishment- is an ineffective way to reduce crime. However, the -prison system as rehabilitation- has had some great successes, just as an example.

Just curious, can you show me any evidence of this?

I don't have the time to google extensively, but for instance, Norway has had some major successes with their rehabilitative methods of incarceration.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-prison-inmates-treated-like-people

And there are these reports:

http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1160&context=srhonorsprog
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/texas-prison-population-shrinks-as-rehabilitatio-1/nRNRY/
http://www.freedommag.org/english/vol29i1/page30.htm

I think it's common sense that granting criminals education and skills and giving them tools to make an honest living outside of incarceration will increase the chances of that happening. Being treated like shit is more likely to create animosity towards your oppressors, and cause an active reluctance to conform to the laws of society.

Last I heard, prison rehab was basically a complete joke. For a number of reasons:

A) Very hard to break old habits
B) Very hard to cut all ties to the old criminal life

Which is rehabilitation is necessary. Lack of competent rehab makes breaking habits an unattractive and difficult choice.

C) You're stuffing people in a box full of murderers and rapists, and no one has their general creature comforts, this tends to harden people up a bit much to be rehabilitated.

Which is why prison as punishment doesn't encourage any self improvement.

D) When people try to subvert the above, they turn prisons into vacation homes that the poor and downtrodden, or just lazy in some cases, can choose to live in rent-free for 5 to 10 years at a time for fairly small stuff on repeat convictions.

Citation needed.

Prison rehabilitation would be the best solution, but to my knowledge it just doesn't work, as the prison environment doesn't exactly lend itself to rehabilitating. You get too soft and you get shanked, and when that's not a concern people are generally to comfy to want to rehabilitate.

Exactly. Prison as punishment is ineffective and counter-productive.

EDIT to respond to above post, which was posted while I was typing:

I'm more interested in success rates, really. Like you said, getting that good environment is very important to rehabilitating a person, and as I said, it's a very delicate balance that's very hard to achieve.

What's hard to achieve is the change in philosophy. People are too focused on punishment and vengeance to accept what would ostensibly be a positive change in society.

On top of that, it costs a ton of money that would otherwise be going to things like schools. While I'm all for helping everyone in need, including those who have fallen from society's graces (like criminals), if the success rates aren't there, we're probably better pushing that money into other places.

Rehabilitation costs a lot of money, but probably much less money than what repeating offenders do.

 

[Amakusa]

While this isn't totally relevant, the information here is useful for those that want to know the state of the programs in the Australian prison system. however it's dated from 2009 thou.

Prison-based correctional rehabilitation: An overview of intensive interventions for moderate to high-risk offenders
Karen Heseltine, Rick Sarre and Andrew Day
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/401-420/tandi412.html

Full report
http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/5/6/4/%7B564B2ECA-4433-4E9B-B4BA-29BD59071E81%7Drpp112.pdf

TLDR jesus christ it's a bloody long doco. Essentially it's a summary of the state of the programs available in the prison. There is some success, but they are also aware that an evidence based approached to find what works is needed and better program tailoring and data collection is needed. It's a long read and very hard to summaries in a few lines.