The New South Wales Government says it will introduce legislation into Parliament this week making life sentences compulsory for people who murder police officers.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/22/3223632.htm?site=sydney

When I heard this yesterday, I thought: O’Farrell, you’ve got to be kidding!

EVERYONE deserves their day in court, where it can be determined just what happened, what mitigating circumstances there might be and what the appropriate penalty should be…. for ANY crime, including killing a police officer.

Police are NOT special! They are NOT a cut above the rest of us!

We can’t have a situation where, in the middle of a highly charged situation, a very desperate person, who turns out to be innocent, inadvertently kills a police officer, but is then locked away for life because of a legal mandatory requirement in law.

All sorts of circumstances are possible. This sort of mandatory law that just completely overrides all circumstances and immediately condemns a killer as the worst of the worst is to be deplored in the strongest possible manner.

Since there is already a mandatory sentence of 25 years for this offence, this proposal is effectively saying that the mandatory sentencing isn't working.

If the current law is working or having the desired effect, why propose the change?

So, logically we are left with two options:
-The current law is working, in which case this is just a political grandstand.
-The current law is not working, which implies that mandatory sentencing doesn't change much and that this change will not work, in which case this is just a political grandstand.

Ludwig I couldn't disagree with you more.

Over recent years we have seen more & more ratbag, bleeding heart judges who have got too close to the criminal & too far removed from the expectations of the public, their employer.

I can find very few of them who's judgement I can accept as reasonable. I have to wonder if their sentences are not more to do with shortage of prison space than justice.

They show little interest in the welfare of the public they are employed to serve. It is time for a much greater level of prescription in the sentences they must hand down, as too many of them have proved themselves incapable of full filling their obligations to the community.

to whome MUCH IS GIVEN
much MORE is to be expected

so sure lets let cop killers get life mandated
BUT also DOUBLE LIFE FOR A COP WHO DOES THE SAME THING

look at who is servant
and who or what is being served

is a cop worth more than a nurse
or docter?

just because the police union gets you off
dont mean you didnt exced your policing authority

to wit
NO victim
no crime..[no right to act]
to kill..where you never even held the authority to act

yes lets give them life
but only if they wernt acting under lawfull authority

Exactly Bugsy. As if a mandatory life sentence would act as a greater deterrent! Of course it wouldn’t. So what’s the point?

This proposal is one big black mark against O’Farrell and his government as far as I’m concerned.

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Hasbeen, I agree with your criticism of judges. But this doesn’t in any way support a no-judgement-just-lock-em-up-forever system, does it?

We’ve got judges that do the wrong thing by us, and we’ve got police who do the same. For as long as we have a high degree of ‘imperfection’ in our whole legal and law-enforcement arena, the LAST thing we need is to make it worse by legislating anti-democratic and anti-rule-of-law laws such as mandatory penalties that operate completely regardless of circumstances or proper judgement… or ANY judgement!

In fact, I would argue that laws that impose mandatory penalties that take away person’s right to fight his/her case are ILLEGAL! Not the New South Wales government nor any Australian government should be able to legislate this sort of thing.

In my view, no-one deserves to be murdered, therefore all those convicted of murder should be treated the same.
I choose to work in the human services industry, if someone murders me while I am doing my job what is the difference between that and a police officer who is doing their job?