I am just wondering what peoples thoughts are with regards to the length of prison sentences. I personally believe that prison sentences are to long and are just a way for society and victims to seek revenge!

We all know that the length of time people spend in jail is not a deterrent it is merely a way at “getting even” with the offender, (an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth).

I am sure you will be hard pressed to find anyone who has robbed a bank because they would only do 10 years in a maximum security prison. If you ask the offender the reason they robbed the bank they will tell you that they thought they would get away with it and the fact that it is 5 years or 20 years in jail does not come into the equation because they think they won’t get caught. After all why rob a bank if you think you will get caught?

Other crimes like drink driving are also classic examples of society’s lust for blood. If somebody is involved in an accident, yes an accident, and they are drunk behind the wheel and kill anther person I can’t understand why the drunk should be sent to jail? Sure they were an idiot and an innocent person is now dead but is this person really a criminal? Do you honestly think that people who drive home after too many beers contemplate that if they are in an accident they will go to jail? I doubt it. They are probably more worried about not having to pay a taxi fair then considering far fetched hypothetical scenarios. The thought of loosing your licence for 6months is deternt enough! The only reason the drunk is sent to jail is so that the victims family can seek revenge. REVENGE! REVENGE! REVENGE! that’s what its all about. REVENGE! I don’t know about you but sending someone to jail for one million years wont make me feel any better about the loss of a loved one.

To put it simply people in 99% of cases commit crimes because 1. They think they wont get caught or 2. It was in the heat of the moment or a poorly thought through decision (husband kills wife in drunken rage). Neither of these 2 scenario would the thought of jail have any real effect on those who carried out the crime.

I think as a society we need to look at alternative to the age old system of revenge. Sure these people should be punished but letting them waste away in jail seems like……. Well such a waste. We should at the very least have them doing community work and have these people try and better themselves and pay back their debt to society instead of having them stare at a wall all day. Lets save jail for hardcore repeat offenders.

Another way of tackling prison time is to de-criminalize drug use and treat the problem medically instead of shutting down drug dealers and driving up the price of a hit of coke to $500 causing more violent crimes and robberies by desperate users but this is another issue for another day……

What bl@@dy rot.
I am not the least bit interested in revenge, I just want crime stopped.

We know that 90% of crime is committed by 10% of the population. If we lock up that 10%, we should have a massive reduction in crime.

With a full implemintation of the 3 strikes, & your in for 10 years, we may not reform, or rehabilitate them, a waste of time any way, but they will not be commiting any crimes for a while.

A nice chain gang clearing noxious plants from our national parks sounds good.

No. Prison sentences in Australia are ridiculously inadequate, and that’s why they don’t work.

The length of time people spent in prison is not a deterrent simply because they are not in prison long enough. Longer sentences and more of them are called for. Criminals have to be kept away from the rest of us until they learn.

Criminals, by definition are morons, and of course they think they will get away with it. When they don’t, the sentence is so lenient that it is as good as getting away with it.

Who gives a stuff whether or not a drunk “contemplates” going jail? He or she should be punished and spend enough time locked up to think about what they have done. If they don’t get the message, let them rot in jail. The more of these creeps who are locked up, the safer the rest of us are.

Seems as though you’ve had some “revenge” exacted on you, EasyTimes.

I’m all for real punishment, and little bit of revenge is not too bad either.

Bring back the lash and the rope!

your right and these pollies just dont bother to listen to the people

so something does need to be done and not just talked about.

go to this link and click on APP and you will find Crime and Policing Policy and several others or email for word doc
email:swulrich@bigpond.net.au

http://ozpolitic.com/

tell me what you think

not all of us are blind

Leigh - I have never been to jail if that is what you mean by someone getting revenge on me but a classmate from school did a number of years in jail for dangerous driving causing death. He was speeding and hit a man on a motor bike head on. Can you explain to me the logic of sending him to jail with murder's and other violent career criminals? Its not like he planned to go out kill him. The only reason he went to jail was to appease the general publics lust for blood.

Its so pointless!

That young kid who killed his 4 mates near Lismore is in a similar predicament. Should he be sent to jail?

Have you ever broken the speed limit? I know I have more times then I care to remember and if it had been me I would be the one in jail. When it comes to drink driving all I will say is that I think I may have once or twice pushed my luck a bit and would have been worried if I was pulled up for an rbt. But then again I might have been fine.

All I am saying is that 99%(all those who have ever sped) of people could be in my school mates shoes and doing time.

Jail should be used to rehabilitate offenders and try and stop them from doing it again. Not just lock them up and forget about them for 10 years let them and then wonder why they have reoffended again so quickly.

Jail is a simple solution to appease the peasant masses but it does not tackle the longer term problems nor is it a suitable punishment to some people who through there own bad luck are now branded wrongfully as criminals.

Not planning to kill someone is no excuse. Your friends stupidity, arrogance and complete disregard for other people led him to kill someone. He should be punished. Yes, the “young kid” who killed four other people should be punished. Sent to jail.

I have exceeded the speed limit in a few instances where I was not concentrating – not enough to cause any more damage than I could have at the speed limit. Some of us do respect the law more than others. I have never caused an accident in 47 years of driving. I have never killed anyone.

It is too late to stop an offender after they have killed someone and runined the lives of their victim's family. Most people show "remorse" because they are sorry for themselves. Criminals are sorry for what the have done only when they are caught and waiting sentencing.

Few people can be rehabilitated, and it is not the job of the law to rehabilitate anyone.

I don’t know of anyone who has been branded a criminal through “bad luck”

Oh I see the “Revenge” word being bandied around. Not a good start.

I would sooner see things like “protect the innocent from the guilty” being stridently advocated than simply seeking to lessen the confinement of the guilty.

Prison is not about revenge, it is about containment and punishment, noting a significant difference between punishment and revenge, example, I punished my daughters when they were naughty, I did not exact “revenge” on them.

I would also note, everyone makes their own choices. No one is forced to undertake criminal acts.

I would further note, to end up in prison these days, you have to have done something pretty bad and actually blown all the non-custodial options of fines, warnings, community based sentences and probation to actually end up in prison.

I generally agree with Leigh on most things but, just this once, I would suggest for drug dealing offenses, the sentences are too long. The sentence for a second drug dealing offense should be a short one, just enough time to wake up the hangman or the injector of lethal fluids.

Those who pursue the practice of dealing drugs and profit by destroying the lives of the gullible deserve no consideration.

Oh, I have never been a prisoner but have worked within the walls of a medium security prison. I have a brother who spent 9 months following a culpable driving offence, mostly in a low security prison farm.

The concensus among those who deal with offenders is it is only the culpable drivers who ever express true remorse, the rest, male or female, are only sorry they got caught.

I had another relative who did a short sentence in a medium security facility for insurance fraud to support a drug habit. One of the best things which happened to him was that stint. Being closely supervised gave him opportunity to be detoxed and refocus his life. He came out a lot better person than when he went in

Easy Times, I share your concerns, particularly the issue of people thinking that they won’t get caught, because the probability of them getting sprung is generally pretty small, or perceived to be very small.

So the length of jail terms is not a deterrent.

What is an effective deterrent then? A good policing regime. And that’s where the whole system falls down.

In some ways the policing regime is pretty good, especially at the big end of the scale. But jees, on the lower half of the spectrum it is just pathetic.

So we have people committing all sorts of relatively minor infringements with virtual impunity, or at least a feeling of impunity.

I don’t know if prison sentences are too long, or whether penalties in general are too high, but I do know one thing; the policing of the majority of the rules of our society is pathetically poor, everyone knows it, and that is the main reason why offences occur.

So why don’t we lower all sentences by say 25% and redirect the tax-payers dollars saved therein into improving the whole law-enforcement regime, and hence the deterrent factor?

A vastly improved law-enforcement regime is of vital importance. But this doesn’t necessarily mean a greater police presence, or a heavier hand from Big Brother.

Ultimately it means making sure as best as we can that the laws that the vast majority of us agree with are enforced at face value or as close to it as can be achieved.

So rather than increasing the police presence, or conspicuousness, I advocate making police much less conspicuous, by way of unmarked cars and plain clothes, so that they meld into the populace…. and so that in the eyes of a potential law-infringer, just about any adult or any car on the road could potentially be a police officer or a police vehicle.

A much-improved response mechanism to public complaints is also needed. We need to better empower the public to do their bit, rather than the current situation of effectively discouraging people from making complaints or reporting incidents that aren’t of an obvious serious nature.

My belief is prison should be a system of pest control for certain crimes where compensation to the victim is impossible such as rape, torture or murder.

Ludwig I see where you are going and that is fine in a major crime sense but I would worry about relying on secret police as a psychological weapon especially as civil rights in Australia is currently in decline. Uniformed presence is probably more effective.

I dont know why speed camera locations are advertised and 'booze buses' not as speed is the major killer on the roads. This is a point to be considered as speeding is conciously breaking the law and probably murders more innocent people than serial killers.

If somebody is caught speeding more than twice in 12 months why are they allowed to keep their licence? Clearly they do not have the aptitude to drive saftely and should lose their licence for life.

West

The presence of uniform police doesn’t work very well because they are so thin on the ground. Even if we doubled the number, they would still constitute a very thin blue line. It is immediately obvious to potential offenders that there are no police around most of the time. So the answer simply must rest partly with the wide-scale implementation of inconspicuous police.

Yes it is a psychological tool, just the same as increasing jail sentences and penalties of all sorts are designed to be a psychological tool.

But of course, increased penalties fail as an increased deterrent for as long as people feel that they stand an overwhelmingly good chance of getting away with their flagrant law-breaking activities, which they do with most relatively minor infringements.

Our civil rights are in decline. But surely strong and even enforcement of the law is not going to hasten this. It would improve civil rights.

Besides, ‘psyching’ the populace into a much better standard of law enforcement can surely only be a positive thing.

Prison sentences are not long enough. If someone has done such a bad crime like murdered some one ,he should be given life away from society, be it jail, what ever, no parole, no second chances!
if it is proved beyond doubt that this person did the crime ,I don't call it revenge,I call it common sense.
I don't want some creep or person with a mal functioning brain living in my town. Simple!
As for the 4 young teenagers killed in Lismore,what a terrible waste of life. They just don't know what the words, don't speed, mean.
Young people must not have other peers in the vehicle till they are at least 21, I believe.
This should be the law ,again, common sense prevails.
All their cars should have a governor on them so they can't speed.That also should be law.
maybe we need a down to earth female pollie who can suggest these laws
to parliament ...
I have never killed anybody ,either in a car or else where, I am 66 and still with a sharp brain to know the difference between right and wrong.

What I am trying to say is that sending a person to jail must be a means to an end otherwise it is just plain old revenge which really in the long run achieves nothing other then very limited short term satisfaction for the victim(s), who have still lost what ever their attacker took from them. And the attacker gets to waste away in jail feeling bitterness and hatred for society.

Another thing which must be considered and I think never is, is the fact that the criminal also has a family who would also be greatly hurt by having them locked in jail for long periods of time. Why should young children be denied a father for 10years because one night he had one to many beers and foolishly drove home and killed a person in a crash? He resisted .06 (about 10 years ago this would have been a “normal” accident when legal driving was up to .07)
Will society be better or worse as a whole if this man is sent to jail?
Will sending this man to jail bring any sort of effective relief to the victim’s family?

We need to work towards effective deterrents and rehabilitation for both the victims and the criminals.

Ludwig the problem with cracking down on small time (so called crime) is that you will have a public up roar over it and turn us into a semi police state. I am sure the majority of people have broken the law in someway this year ( I know I have) and I doubt it will achieve much by cracking down on J walking and fining people who are doing 101km an hour in a 100 zone

Easytimes prison should be a form of pest control. We swat funnel webs , spray aphids, shoot feral pigs, disinfect bacteria and innoculate viruses, why not prison for life for those who choose to harm others? It is inhumane to future victims to just let people go.

Easytimes “it is just plain old revenge which really in the long run achieves nothing other then very limited short term satisfaction for the victim(s),”

Wrong, I pointed out previously, you must have missed it,

“Prison is not about revenge, it is about containment and punishment, noting a significant difference between punishment and revenge, example, I punished my daughters when they were naughty, I did not exact “revenge” on them.”

Prison is partially as West indicated, “pest control” (I used the term “containment”). Prison is also about “the process of the law” exacting due punishment, without revenge, on those who transgress its laws.

It is by having prescribed sentences (or what is supposed to be prescribed, on the longer side) plus the law (judge) deciding on the sentence, not the victim or the family of the victim, which separates “punishment” from “revenge”.

“Ludwig the problem with cracking down on small time (so called crime) is that you will have a public up roar over it and turn us into a semi police state.”

EasyTimes, I find this sort of sentiment really odd, although I’ve heard it from plenty of people. Surely we would all welcome a crackdown on law-abidance. I mean, there is something really strange about crying foul over our terrible road toll while at the same time crying foul about a much better standard of policing of road rules, for example.

We need a high standard of policing so that we all know where we stand with the law, we know that what is written in law is what is policed or we get told in clear terms what the leniencies are and when they apply. We need to know that the law applies equally to all and that police discretionary powers are used properly. We need to know that we all have an equal opportunity to present our arguments in a court of law if we feel we are being wrongly done by….. and so on.

The very notion that a significant improvement in law enforcement means implementing a police state is just terrible. I can’t understand how people think like this. But again, many do.

Improvements in law enforcement need to be accompanied by law reform, for example, jay-walking. There are lots of laws that are not observed with no ill-effect. These need to be redefined.

As for speed limits, I advocate 100kmh limits becoming 100kmh zones where the limit is officially 110. Then anyone who slips over 110 and gets busted can hardly have any complaint….for as long as speed limits are always obvious, which is another thing that needs vast improvement. Similarly, a 10kmh addition could effectively be placed on all speed limits. This would be an excellent compromise in the wake of vastly improved policing, by way of unmarked patrol cars and many many more unmarked stationary cameras.