Government must act on weak sentencing ruling
It is appalling that the State government is refusing to act to overturn a court ruling that is allowing serious criminals to escape jail.
Coalition MPs have been repeatedly calling on the government to act, yet all the government will say is that it is “monitoring” the situation and will act if “it becomes clear” that it should.
A ruling by the Court of Appeal in December 2014 has taken a law to give tougher sentences to lesser offenders and turned it into a law to give weak sentences to serious offenders.
The Court’s sweeping ruling held that in future a community correction order could be suitable for “relatively serious offences” such as “aggravated burglary, intentionally causing serious injury, some forms of sexual offences involving minors, some kinds of rape and some categories of homicide”.
Since then, large numbers of serious offenders have been released with no or minimal jail terms, or given bail instead of being remanded, as a result of this ruling.
The time for “monitoring” is over. The government must legislate to tell the courts they’ve got it wrong and the community must be properly protected.
For more on the effects of the Court of Appeal’s ruling, see Urgent law reform needed as thugs go free.