Nigel Stobbs

Sentencing and public confidence: results from a national Australian survey on public opinions towards sentencing

This paper examines the critical issue of public confidence in sentencing, and presents findings from Phase I of an Australia-wide sentencing and public confidence project. Phase I comprised a nationally representative telephone survey of 6005 participants. The majority of respondents expressed high levels of punitiveness and were dissatisfied with sentences imposed by the courts. Despite this, many were strongly supportive of the use of alternatives to imprisonment for a range of offences. These nuanced views raise questions regarding the efficacy of gauging public opinion using opinion poll style questions; indeed the expected outcome from this first phase of the four phase sentencing and public confidence project. The following phases of this project, reported on elsewhere, examined the effects of various interventions on the robustness and nature of these views initially expressed in a standard ‘top of the head’ opinion poll.

Sentencing and public confidence in Australia: the dynamics and foci of small group deliberations

This study is the first of its kind in Australia to use the deliberative small group methodology to explore participants’ deeper, nuanced thoughts on specific criminal justice issues in order to gain insight into the underlying beliefs that influence people’s opinions on sentencing. The use of small group discussions allows an analysis of the dynamics of people’s interactions and the potential of these to elicit deeper, more thoughtful deliberation. Participants’ comments around two policy areas – mandatory sentencing and the use of alternatives to imprisonment – were founded on concerns about the need for judges to tailor the sentence to fit the specific circumstances of each case. The methodology itself has shown that people may change their initial opinions on complex issues when given the opportunity to discuss and reflect on their beliefs.

The Law and Policy Context of Extradition from Australia to the People’s Republic of China

One cost of China’s remarkable economic growth since 1978 has been levels of corruption among some public officials, significant enough to seriously erode public confidence in government and the Communist Party of China, and even threaten certain areas of domestic economic growth. Anti-corruption strategies seek to locate and repatriate corrupt officials, who have fled overseas as ‘economic fugitives’. In furtherance of these strategies, China has sought to ratify a number of bilateral extradition treaties, including the Treaty on Extradition between Australia and the People’s Republic of China, which Australia signed in 2007, but abandoned its only attempt to ratify in March 2017, due to domestic political pressure and strident criticism of its terms. Ratification is important to China, not only to supplement its pursuit of economic fugitives, but also to help enhance its soft power and diplomatic prestige internationally, and the political legitimacy of the Communist Party domestically. It is important to Australia as a means of demonstrating goodwill, to preserve crucial law enforcement collaboration, and to protect its markets with its largest trading partner. This paper argues that the current treaty impasse cannot be appropriately resolved either by ratifying the treaty in its current form or by requesting amendments that are unlikely to be acceptable to China. It considers several other interim alternatives and assesses their potential to reconcile China’s need to save face and Australia’s need to honour its commitment to the Rule of Law and preserve its international human rights reputation.

‘Structuring’ Judicial Sentencing Discretion: Consistency, Guidance or Pandering to the Punitive?

Until quite recently, most Australian jurisdictions gave statutory force to the principle of imprisonment as a sanction of last resort, reflecting its status as the most punitive sentencing option open to the court.1 That principle gave primary discretion as to whether incarceration was the most appropriate means of achieving the purpose of a sentence to the sentencing court, which received all of the information relevant to the offence, the offender and any victim(s). The disestablishment of this principle is symptomatic of an increasing erosion of judicial discretion with respect to sentencing, which appears to be resulting in some extremely punitive consequences.