Recent posts in this blog have questioned the rhetoric used by the current SA Attorney-General, including claims that he is supported by all "decent people" - a category that apparently doesn't include the SA Supreme Court and much of the legal profession. Mr Atkinson is warring with outlaw motorcycle gangs (aka "organised crime") and gamers (apparently more threatening than the OMGs), and has had trouble with the notion of an implied right of political communication.
The SA Premier, according to the online offshoot of the dominant Adelaide newspaper (the same offshoot damned by the Attorney-General as a "sewer"), promises a revolution in the criminal justice system if his Government is re-elected.
Premier Mike Rann yesterday said he would change the law to allow juries "in appropriate cases" to hear evidence of relevant prior criminal behaviour and offending by the accused.So much for the notion that people should not be recurrently punished for the same offence.
"Serious criminals like those who are violent, child-sex offenders, or internet predators, should have to account to a court for their actions and previous behaviour," Mr Rann said. ...
Labor would amend the 1921 Evidence Act to allow juries to hear similar fact evidence, propensity evidence and evidence of uncharged acts. Mr Rann said if re-elected, he would also tighten sentencing legislation to take away the option of suspended sentences for serious, violent and recidivist offenders.
In a nice piece of hype, unsubstantiated by reference to statistics, the Premier is reported as stating that "There is an unacceptably high risk of child-sex offenders repeating their crimes after release".
The meaning of that statement is unclear. From some perspectives any risk - no matter how remote - is too high and it is imperative to engage in preemptive social prophylaxis, such as the surgical castration of offenders discussed in Richard Wetzell's Inventing The Criminal: A History of German Criminology, 1880-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2000) or extra-judicial permanent detention of every offender.
Lest the Government's 'war on crime' credentials be in doubt, the Premier promises extended proceeds of crime penalties -
"These laws will allow for the confiscation of a convicted offender's property, whether or not it is lawfully acquired and whether or not there is any level of proof about the source of any property at all," Mr Rann said.Let's not bother about notions of proof or justice when a headline is available.
Details of the Government's new justice platform are, as yet, unavailable. The latest media release states that -
The Rann Labor Government is demanding to know how the Liberal Party will pay for its promise of "building more prisons" by 2014 – or - by 2018.Beware, it seems ... hordes of drooling axe-murderers will shortly arrive (modems balanced on the back of their Harleys?) to eat your kiddies and defenestrate the family cockatoo or budgie.
The Liberal prisons policy announcement today shows both dates. But no money. Correctional Services Minister Tom Koutsantonis says the Liberals' 10-page policy, does not promise a single new dollar for adult prisons.
This is yet another sloppily-prepared Liberal policy without any costings – an all-too familiar theme that shows Isobel Redmond is not ready for Government.
South Australians deserve better than this kind of dodgy ducking and weaving over costings.
In the absence of new prisons, the Liberals will have to release hundreds of prisoners back out into the community if it wants to reach its target of reducing the prison population down to "the national average".
This is nothing but a soft-on-crime, soft-on-criminals policy.
The Opposition (in a policy statement decorated with razor-wire and searchlights) meanwhile promises that -
A Redmond Liberal Government will put an end to the premature release of offenders from prison who have not completed rehabilitation – a practice that has flourished under the Rann Government.
