WHEN DETERRENT SENTENCES ARE A WASTE OF TIME

 12. Feb. 2010. – 14:15:33 

On 11th January I commented on the reduction in local court reporting; LOCAL COURT REPORTS ARE A THING OF THE PAST

An erudite legal blogger has posted interesting facts on deterrence as applied in the justice system. However he misses one crucial fact and that whatever is in the mind of the law maker or sentencer the "deterrent sentence" must be promulgated to the others with a propensity to commit similar crimes. For high profile crimes national news programmes and newspapers take an almost ghoulish interest but for low level crime local TV news and newspapers hard copied or on line are the obvious places where such reports would be aired. But with reduced viewing of local TV and court reporting per se increasingly a rare event this just doesn`t happen. Of course there is the word of mouth network in pubs and other places where people of like interests congregate but can deterrence work at a low level. My opinion is that it cannot.