Toni, for those that advocate a lock em up and throw away the key policy, all they have to do is run jails with over crowed third world conditions. It costs no more for them.
In Fiji recently, a husband got 6 months for breaking the lid on his wife's washing machine during a domestic argument, he didn't actually assault her, just the washing machine. True, washing machines are a luxury for many Fijian's, but 6 months, this is not uncommon. Prisons in third world countries are never a nice place, even by the standards of the land, brutal, harsh, violent, dirty, unforgiving.

For the penny-pinchers, gaol space is grossly overused by imprisoning people for non-violent offences.

Imprisonment is a violent sanction fit only for violent criminals. Stop imprisoning non-violent offenders and use the prisons only for those who have committed the despicable crime of violent assault (in any of its varieties) against a human being, and our sanctions would match the value most of us place on the human right to inviolability of the person.

The proper role for judges and magistrates is to ensure that courts thoroughly explore the guilt or otherwise of the defendant. The proper role for society is to decide the range of penalties, and then of judges and magistrates to allocate penalties within the range decreed by society.

Duh.

In domestic cases where the scumbags resume the crimes they were committing where they left off, every year sliced off a violent criminal's penalty is a year of tyranny imposed on the victim who has to live in fear while the scumbag is at large. In determiniung minimum sentences, society can clip the wings of those judges/magistrates who don't give a tuppenny for the victims. Compassion? Spare me.

Stop press: There's a woman who faces deportation to New Zealand after serving 19 months gaol for a non-violent marijuana offence. All that tax money to victimise a non-violent offender!

I'm a penny-pincher too over waste of my tax money. I'm much more concerned about the standing order for F35 strike fighters ($122m each plus $22.5m for the engine) for strafing Arabs for the Yanks than the cost of protecting the humnan rights of victims of violent crime in their homes.

It's been interesting watching news coverage and reading online comments about Hazem El Masri being charged over an alleged DV innocent.

So many absolutely certain he is guilty either because he is Muslim or just because he is male. Many outraged that his defence has attacked the character of his accuser, he is apparently just supposed to man up and admit he did it.

I've got no idea of his guilt or innocence, don't follow football enough to know much more than his name before tonight.

I do think it should be an eye opener for those with an interest in the presumption of innocence to see the way this is playing out so far regardless of what the courts later find regarding his guilt or innocence. Many in the commentary I've read are very clear that because he is accused he must be guilty and any attempts to claim otherwise are just cowardice and a failure to admit that he is an abuser.

R0bert

Toni Lavis, "In this case I consider that a good thing. I wouldn't be happy to have to pay more tax just so we can implement a one-size-fits-none mandatory sentencing policy that sees hefty penalties applied to first time offenders regardless of the circumstances of their case. Policies like that ALWAYS end up in gross miscarriages of justice, and I'm not real keen on paying extra taxes for miscarriages of justice. It just doesn't seem like good value for money to me."

Agree

There doesn't seem to be a great deal of benefit in the US approach where any police call that might be construed as DV related results in someone being thrown to the pavement, 'cuffed' and going to gaol as an automatic knee-jerk reaction by the police.