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.