The Challenge of Sentencing Offenders

Sentencing offenders is a complex affair. It challenges judges, defence counsel and prosecutors to get it right. The sentences that result are part law, part art and part wrong. Here is a story about one of mine (I was defence counsel, not accused).

I returned to my chamber, a space not deserving of the ‘s’ that bestows dignity. The floor scattered with briefs, each marked by pink ribbon, like land mines. The desk cluttered and the bookshelves ordered chaos.

Late afternoon light sneaks through the towers to my small window. No match for the cold buzz of the fluorescent light that flattens and sanitises everything.

On the grey street below wigs and robes leave court, suits pulling briefcases in their wake. On the corner, a man sporting tattoos and tie pulls the woman next to him close, laughs and points to three coppers striding away.

Later, judges’ chariots with lights ablaze, emerge from underground and swing into the street.

A large unmarked van appears from behind steel watch house doors. Good men and bad heading to prison. For days, months, years.

I knew one of them. A husband and father, soon to be grandfather. A hardworking man with a ‘I’d rather be fishing’ sticker on his prime mover. He had no criminal history, until today. He’d lived a blameless life, except for the morning he pushed his semi onto a causeway ahead of a wedge of cyclists. A momentary misjudgement. He pleaded guilty.

I’d told the court all this. Argued the case law. Still, a popular cyclist had died and our community needed to be sent a message: you have to take care driving. General deterrence, said the judge.

Outside the last of the day slid away between the blocks. Below, a skateboarder rattled across the intersection and a driver, remembering, turned on his lights half-way down street.

I thought about the day. A good man in prison; gaol the least of his torments. And a cyclist who still wouldn’t be coming home.