Some footballer’s son pleaded guilty today to a charge of recklessly causing serious injury for breaking someone’s nose and eye socket in a bar, and been sentenced to a six month Intensive Corrections Order. 12 hours a week for 26 weeks community work, plus other restrictions (and possibly other conditions, like assessment for programs to further reduce reoffending). A firm but fair punishment, since an ICO is considered a form of imprisonment served in the community, and at the higher end of the sentencing scale. The magistrate noted that “the public was concerned about violent assaults on innocent people and would want Wells severely punished”, which is what he did.
The Hun readers’ response?
Bill Jones of Melbourne Posted at 12:04 PM Today
Yeah Im sure this will deter the louts! … Victoria is a a jokeatticus Posted at 12:07 PM Today
Any time a person is punched in the head death could occur. Unprovoked assault deserves jail as a deterrent to others. Another example of our pussy justice system under labour.Brendon Posted at 12:08 PM Today
What a weak sentence. What sort of message does this send to people? So dissappointing with such pathetic sentences.No Justice of North Fitzroy Posted at 12:10 PM Today
Another slap o the wrist with the good old feather duster. Well done Magistrate Reardon that will put the fear of god into all the other thugs roaming the streets and bars of Melbourne.Lurch of Rosebud Posted at 12:14 PM Today
What a farce! Another example of soft peddling on violent crime.kerry of Melbourne Posted at 12:16 PM Today
So basically, he got off?
And so on. No, Kerry, he didn’t “get off”, he was sentenced to a form of jail – just one that involves putting something back into the community rather than just costing it money.
Seriously, I see a lot of Herald Sun readers in my day job, and very few of them think an ICO is “getting off” when it’s being applied to them. It’s bloody hard work – more so, in many ways, than jail.
It also has the following advantages for the rest of us in the community over jail:
- It makes the offender put something back;
- It costs a hell of a lot less than jail;
- It rehabilitates the offender a hell of a lot more effectively than jail;
- It gives Corrections an opportunity to monitor the offender in the community and make sure they’re learning skills and strategies for not re-offending whilst living in the community – if they do, they’re put straight into jail.
Basically, like the drug rehabilitation programs (CISP and CREDIT), corrections orders provide the community with fairly inexpensive methods of effectively reducing crime whilst also punishing offenders. And yet they’re mocked by people who barely understand what they entail as a “joke” and “soft”.
Why is the Hun-reading public so in love with jail? It’s expensive. It generally makes offenders a higher risk to the public when they’re eventually released. Do they like paying more to make themselves less safe?
I don’t think they’ve thought this through.
Moved On 
I’ve never been under their thumb, but those outside Corrections staff can be fucking psycho’s, which is brilliant because it scares those younger kids into doing the right thing properly and not doing the bad stuff again.
I wonder if those commenters think probabtion officers are sweet little old ladies, give ’em a smile and a wink and then go back to bashing people and riding their motorcycles or whatever. The ones I’ve met through work, if you smile or wink at them, they’d on the phone faster than you can blink and you’ve got yourself another 20 hours community service.
That being said they are all Victorians, so maybe they just think that behind bars is the natural state of their fellow citizens, seeing as you are all convicts.
“I don’t think they’ve thought this through.”
Well duh.
So I was right!
Howard’s Battlers no long exist for the Movement Conservatives of the tabliod press.
They’re all just Bogans and louts now.
Reap , where ever he is, must be feeling nervous.
Cheers
Meh! Tabloid, of course.
Yesterday’s Law Report has an interview with a retiring Chief Justice of the DIstrict Court in WA that I listened to this morning. She was excellent. She says,
“[T]he story is told of two men downriver, and a body comes down the river and they pull the body out, and then more bodies keep coming down the river and they keep pulling them out, and finally, one of them says to the other, ‘You stay here and do what you can and I’ll go upstream and see what’s happening.’ Now as far as judges are concerned we are downstream pulling the bodies out of the river; what in God’s name are the rest of you doing upstream?’ And the fact is, you’re doing nothing, and you’re to put all the blame and all the responsibility on to us and it’s stupid, quite frankly, stupid.”
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