The Baillieu Government and Monster Creation Business
The Baillieu Government, like so many state governments around Australia, promotes a “tough on crime” agenda. The media happily tags along, creating a fear of youth driven crime waves that, according to any statistical analysis, simply doesn’t exist. It’s a gigantic rort perpetrated on an unwitting public who feel the fear and in turn shriek for harsher sentences.
The Baillieu Government is moving forward with its plan to introduce mandatory minimum two year sentences for offenders between the age of 16 and 17 convicted of crimes involving violence.
It’s not just a political stunt. It’s much worse than that. The social cost of fixed mandatory sentences for youth offenders can only be measured after the Baillieu Government is long dead and gone.
Firstly, there is no suggestion that the juvenile justice system is in any way offering sentences that are inappropriate or systematically lenient. Young offenders who pose a risk to the community are locked up but custodial sentences remain at the discretion of a judiciary mindful of the long term costs of detention both to the state and the individual.
If the Baillieu Government took the time to understand the reports from its own sentencing advisors, it would quickly learn that the existing data shows that mandatory sentencing, as with longer sentences, offers no deterrent value to youth or adult offenders.
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