Wrong to talk tough

I RECENTLY happened upon the article A Single Blow…But It’s Still Being Felt (Gazette, 3 August). The opinion piece suggests that the best chance of stopping “senseless acts of violence…is to award a penalty that clearly demonstrates society’s contempt for these gutless acts”.
In Victoria, the stated aims of imprisonment are punishment, denunciation, rehabilitation, community protection and deterrence.
The Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council recently released a report on the deterrent effect which found that “imprisonment has, at best, no effect on the rate of reoffending and is often criminogenic”. In many cases imprisonment increases the likelihood of reoffending because “prison reinforces criminal identifty and may diminish or sever social ties that encourage lawful behaviour”.
The article argues that tougher sentencing is the best chance of “stopping this madness”. In stark contrast, the Sentencing Council found that “increases in the severity of penalties…do not produce a corresponding increase in the general deterrent effect”.
While a tougher sentence accords with the stated aims of denunciation and punishment, this must be balanced against other factors.
It is questionable whether a long sentence in a youth facility or a stint in an adult prison will do anything to rehabilitate a teenage offender. Rather, this is likely to further entrench criminal tendencies because, as the VSAC notes, “prison is a learning environment for crime”.
In his recent Kerferd Oration, Justice David Harper noted that “media reports play a critical role in the development of public opinion on sentencing”. This sentiment is echoed in a 2006 report where the VSAC found that newspapers “report selectively” and as a result “people falsely generalise that leniency characterises the entire sentencing process”.
The article is emotionally manipulative and alarmist and compounds the misconception that harsher penalties necessarily mean less crime. The last word should go to Justice Harper who foreshadowed the article when he noted that “nothing spoils a good story about sentencing more than reliable information”.
Declan McKnight,
Ballarat.