THE PRESS TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 1987. Words about sentences

Press, 7 April 1987, Page 24

THE PRESS TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 1987. Words about sentences

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice, Mr Palmer, frets because too many people, in his opinion, are being sent to prison. The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, worries that prison sentences seem inadequate to a large part of the public and will ask Mr Palmer to review the sentencing powers of the judiciary. Between keeping some people out of prison, and keeping others in prison longer, the Cabinet’s two most prominent lawyers come close — each in his own way — to interfering with the traditional independence of the courts from Parliament. Mr Palmer is disappointed that the judges are not following the spirit of the Criminal Justice Act, a law he introduced, but are sending to prison too many people who have not bashed, knifed, or shot someone. These people — persistent burglars, big-time swindlers, illegal drug manufacturers, and so on — are contributing to the overcrowding in the country’s prisons that Mr Palmer so much wants to reduce.

Another source of overcrowding is the number of people who are awaiting sentence and either have been remanded in custody or have been granted bail but have not fulfilled the bail conditions. Mr Palmer says that the Government will change the bail system to reduce the number of people remanded in prison before sentencing. This will inconvenience those convicted criminals who elect not to take up the bail offered them, knowing that time served in prison on remand will come off their eventual sentence. It might inconvenience more seriously the courts and the public if Mr Palmer prevents the courts removing from society nasty little felons that the courts and the public want removed.

If Mr Palmer is so determined on a policy of keeping criminals out of prison, he

might try to enlist the support of the Government caucus for the removal from the law books of the courts’ discretion to imprison criminals on certain offences. While the discretion remains, the courts are entitled to use it Few Government members, aware of the prevailing public sentiment, would be likely to agree to limiting the courts’ powers in this way. In an election year that is certain to make much of law and order issues, castration of the courts would be political suicide.

Election considerations aside, such an approach is open to politicians who wish to instruct the courts on what penalties should be imposed. Talking the courts out of using the prisons, as Mr Palmer is attempting to do, seems rather like an expedient answer to overcrowding in prisons, rather than a consistent penal policy. Mr Lange, on the other hand, gives the impression of being fully aware of the political demands of the moment. Whether the review he suggests is a suitable method of influencing sentences imposed by the courts — and whether, indeed, the courts will allow themselves to be influenced by Mr Lange’s review — it at least has the merit of being in sympathy with public feeling.

Without giving an undertaking to remedy matters, Mr Lange has identified correctly the nub of the issue: “If sentences are inconsistent, or seem inadequate, or the public does not have confidence in them, it is not actually enough to go on hoping for the best. Either confidence in the existing arrangements for sentencing has to be restored, or we start looking for new arrangements.” That about sums it up; but what would Mr Lange propose, and would Mr Palmer agree?