The 'Law is an ass' thread

[Nick - Pie Man]

[stui magpie]

[Tannin]

[pietillidie]

^I know what you mean, but without researching it that's probably an artifact of legal ramifications elsewhere. The systemic legal implications are the hidden reality here. You might get what you want in this instance, but make a hash of things elsewhere. This why I referred to "net effects". Indeed, every time I bother researching it that's the type of thing I find.

[HAL]

You got that right.

[Pies4shaw]

[Tannin]

^ None of these questions are relevant. You SAW what they did, for that there are no excuses. Repeat, no excuses. I don't CARE how old they were at the time, I don't care what "sentencing discounts" were applied or not applied, and neither does the rest of the community. Most of all, I don;t care what the statistics pretend the "acceptable range of sentences" is - for that particular crime, 12 months minimum is manifestly absurd, and a pair of community service orders is a disgrace to the entire legal profession.

The DPP has appealed and wants a miinimum of four to six years for the worst offender, with two years minimum for the other two. If this case had come up just a few months ago, there would have been no possibility of appeal. The scum lawyers representing these criminals- and yes I do call them scum lawyers because any decent human being would be too ashamed to represent these criminals in any way after seeing the evidence of what sort of viscious, evil people they are - are claiming youth, a "grievous error of judgment", "we all make mistakes" "exemplary history", remorse, and depression.

I'd be bloody tempted to jail the defence lawyers too, for wasting the court's time with manifest bullshit.

[Tannin]

Meanwhile, over in the other forum, we see an otherwise law-abiding citizen being smashed with a $25,000 fine and jail till the fine is paid for .. wait for it ... for failing to pay a road toll.

Yes, you heard it right: our contemptible legal system thinks that a violent, unprovoked bashing deserves a community service order, but driving on a toll road without paying the toll deserves $25,000 fine and/or time behind bars.

It's no wonder the bloody Liberals and the herald-Sun are milking the crime issue for all the votes that they can - it's a massive disgrace and Blind Freddie would arc up about it.

The great shame is that the Liberals, if they get in, won't actually fix anything, they will just introduce a few token mandatory sentences such that judges will be unable to exercise discretion when it really is appropriate - in other words, in al likelihood, the Libs will just make it even worse.

But community service orders for vicious, unprovoked bashings and then $25,000.00 fine for driving on a toll road .... People talk about contempt of court. Well, what do the farnarkling courts expect when we see utterly inexcusable idiocy like that?

[pietillidie]

[Tannin]

We start with a dose of reality.

First, it is absurd to keep on pretending that the community at large does not feel much the way that I have described on this matter. Utterly absurd. If you really do believe that, then it is well past time that you got out into the real world and talked to some different people. There is a massive community ill-will towards this sort of grossly inadequate sentence. Indeed, it is such a massive groundswell that even bleeding-heart left-wing liberals like yours truly share in it - and it's very rare indeed for me to share anything with the Herald-Sun readers of this world.

Second, it is easy to see that you haven't taken up my dare - for no even semi-civilised human being can watch something like that and still pretend that there is no such thing as evil.

Third: I am all in favour of facilitating due legal process, and I am well aware of the lawyer's responsibility to represent all clients regardless of guilt. In this case, however, I do not believe that it is acceptable to weave a web of excuse for such acts, and I have no respect at all for the conscienceless "professionals" who seem to think it is their duty to ensure that justice is perverted. I could not sleep at nights if I'd taken money to stand up and argue that these vicious scum should walk free.

Fourth, where is my "tossing of precedent"? There is none. There is, indeed, plenty of precedent for putting violent criminals in jail, and for taking them out of the community so that they cannot re-offend for a while. Courts have been doing that for centuries. It is when they stop doing it - when they stop doing their job - that the system breaks down.

[pietillidie]

Tannin, you'd be right on the widespread support for being "tougher on crime". I'll concede that, but going by your past posts the popularity of an idea is clearly not something you personally value as a path to understanding and knowledge. That type of judgement is obviously being made at the irrational visceral level, much the same as people thinking Arabs are terrorists, the murder rate was lower in the old days, Satan influences events, snakes are slimy, herbal tea X is good for you because it's bitter, or that things they've personally experienced are more prevalent or salient than things they haven't.

The rest I'll leave to Pies4shaw - not to avoid it, but to save time. I did watch the video; it looks like a very nasty youth fight which obviously had very nasty consequences. But no, I didn't see any "evil", nor any reason to believe the thought of harsher sentences would've entered the minds of those involved before carrying out their primitive arational actions.

The work of Kahneman on the shortcomings of human cognition is worth a read in this context:

http://www.princeton.edu/~kahneman/docs/Publications/Maps_bounded_rationality_DK_2003.pdf

http://web.missouri.edu/~segerti/capstone/Foreign%20Policy.pdf

[Pies4shaw]

[Tannin]

[pietillidie]

^It's not an arbitrary view in this case, I'm afraid. I'm yet to see any compelling evidence that "being tough on crime" reduces crime. I have, however, seen data showing that having police on the ground reduces crime (though we have to be careful with that as it often just geographically displaces crime), and many alternatives to harsh sentencing reduce the rate of recidivism.

Now, admittedly I haven't done a research project on the matter, but where's the data, Tannin? I would point you to the arguments and data in this book, for starters:

http://www.amazon.com/Preventing-Violence-Prospects-Tomorrow-Gilligan/dp/0500282781

But you don't need to look far to see, as expected, we have a classic perceptual error at work here. Check out the findings of this study:

"In contrast to the opinion of the majority of respondents, the level of crime actually fell during the two years, indicating the majority of respondents (89.3%) held incorrect perceptions, with almost four in 10 making an error of assessment (Roberts & Indermaur 2009).

During the same time period, respondents' perceptions of the proportion of crimes involving violence (actual or threatened violence) also proved to be quite inaccurate. The largest group of respondents (23.6%) thought that 71 to 80 percent of crimes involved violence; followed by those (16.9%) who believed violence was involved in 41 to 50 percent of offences. Another 11.9 percent perceived violence to be present in 81 to 90 percent of crimes. However, violent crimes (actual or threatened), accounted for fewer than 10 percent of all crimes (Roberts & Indermaur 2009).

Only 3.7 percent of those surveyed accurately assessed the level of violent crime. Therefore, an overwhelming majority (96.3%) of respondents misperceived the prevalence of violence, most of them by a substantial margin. Respondents were also asked for their perceptions of the proportion of persons found guilty who had been charged and brought to court for violent offences. The largest group of respondents (24.9%) put the figure at between 41 and 50 percent, followed by between 71 and 80 percent (11.5% of respondents).

The actual proportion of those charged and brought to court for a violent offence and subsequently convicted, was between 91 and 100 percent—a response given by only 1.8 percent of those polled (Roberts & Indermaur 2009)."

Further:

"The main findings of this study appear to reinforce those of other Australian and foreign studies.

Older survey participants are more likely to hold the inaccurate view that the crime rate is increasing (when there has actually been an overall decline), while males are more likely than females to accurately perceive an increase in the crime rate. The causal drivers of these gender differences are important questions for further research.

Post-secondary education also affected the degree to which individuals regarded the crime rate to have increased over the past two years, with those having higher education tending to more accurately perceive crime levels than their less-educated counterparts.

Entertainment preferences can also play a role in individuals' misperceptions of crime, with increased reliance on family and television as sources of information being associated with a greater misperception of the crime rate.

Taken as a whole, this study essentially reinforces the main findings of most previous studies on perceptions of crime—that there are substantial misperceptions of crime, both of the number of incidences and trends in crime, among the general population. As a consequence, public policymakers should exercise additional care when framing important law enforcement decisions taken against the background of the public's potential misperceptions of crime."

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/381-400/tandi396.aspx

All classic cognitive and perceptual errors at work, as expected. Again, no, I haven't done an in-depth study on the issue, but nothing I've seen comes close to demonstrating the contrary. All the evidence I've ever seen strongly points the other way, which doesn't mean it's not out there somewhere, but the onus is on others to bring forth their evidence.

[OEP]

Violence and the method used to inflict said violence is on the rise as is the brutal nature being used to cause maximum damage to the victims. Also what has become a worrying trend is for the assailant to continue inflicting damage after it is obvious the assaulted is no longer in a position to defend themselves.

I've seen assaults like the one posted by Tannin and much worse.

Three questions are often posed to me by my friends and those who know my past experiences.

The most asked question is how can a person or persons do that, what's the trigger?

Sometimes it's alcohol, sometimes drugs, sometimes it can be a culmination of things over a period of time, sometimes the person doing the assaulting can originally be defending themselves and take it to far, and in extreme cases these people are evil.

Another question is usually are any of these legitimate reasons, not just legally but also morally, for the dangerous nature of these types of assaults (and in a lot of cases the sustained brutality involved), and should genuine remorse after the fact be taken into account when (if) a trial occurs?

The other common question is what can be done to stop this? The unfortunate answer to this is nothing. Greater sentences, harsher penalties aren't the be all and end all that some want them to be because some people simply don't care about the possible consequences for their actions, while others become so entranced by their actions they loose the ability to process any possible future consequences.

I have my views and obviously they'll directly conflict with other peoples views and generally it's almost impossible to find middle ground because middle ground isn't there to be found. Half measures don't work and are a waste of time, definitive action needs to be taken because the current system just isn't working and a change needs to occur before society completely descends into anarchy.

If anyone is interested I believe the laws themselves need to be simplified, there are simply to many and there to complicated making it harder to gain a successful prosecution and easier to attain a not guilty verdict.
The sentencing laws need to be tightened because at the moment Magistrates and Judges have far to much latitude when deciding on a sentence, basically the gap between the minimum and maximum possible sentence needs to be shortened.
A three strike rule needs to be invoked for all serious offences and by this I mean a combined three strike rule not just three for one offence and three for another, instead three total.
Juries need to made redundant because it's far to easy to confuse them and confusion often leads to doubt and doubt ends up becoming a not guilty verdict. By this I mean you have a situation where a lawyer simply muddies the issues and instead of it being a contest of law it becomes a contest of intellect and if you've had no previous exposure to statute law even the smartest person can be easily confused. Switching from a 12 person jury system to a three panel Judging panel negates this issue (and in doing so will reduce the length of trials and the shorten the period between someone being charged and having to face a trial date), but still allows for multiple opinions of the evidence being presented.
I believe more prisons need to be built (and sufficiently staffed and overcrowding reduced), and more offenders need to be jailed. Yes I know I previously stated this doesn't work in all cases but at the end of the day the publics safety MUST be made a higher priority than the offenders possible rehabilitation.

Take it all as you will these are my views, and these views have been fostered after years and years of dealing with these violent crimes, investigating them, and completing the process by having the charges heard in court.

At the end of the day the more meaningful debate that society have on this ever increasing problem the greater chance a real solution can be found for the majority rather than the minority.