Australian justice system follows postmodern European model into the sewer

We in Australia look around the world and see terrific injustice being meted out to the victims of crime brought about by justice systems gone haywire.

However, we have plenty of problems at home, should we choose to look, as demonstrated again in the following story.

From the ABC on Mon Jul 21, 2008:

Bail opposed for woman in kidnapping case

Victorian police have opposed bail for a woman accused of fleeing interstate with her partner's seven-year-old son earlier this month.

The Melbourne Magistrates court heard 36-year-old Danielle Boundy of Winchelsea attacked Eric Kruger with a bread knife and a hammer in the days before she took his son. It is alleged she sped off with the boy in Mr Kruger's car in Ballarat. An intervention order has been taken out against Boundy, who consented to it in court. She is charged with nine offences. Police told the court Boundy's family does not want her released from prison.

Boundy's lawyer said the authorities are keeping her in a 23-hour lockdown.

The bail hearing will resume tomorrow.

That's from last year. A woman knowingly kidnaps a young child, terrifying the family as to his safety.

So how did things work out for her?

Fast forward a year...

Woman who stole child avoids jail time

A Victorian woman who stole her internet lover's seven-year-old son and drove him to South Australia has avoided serving jail time. Danielle Boundy, 37, ordered her lover out of the car during an argument near Ballarat, in July 2008 and with, the child still in the back seat, she drove on to Port Augusta in South Australia.

The Victorian County Court heard on Tuesday that Boundy rang the child's mother later that night falsely saying she was near the country Victorian town of Winchelsea. Police tracked the call to Port Augusta and arrested Boundy late the next day.

Boundy pleaded guilty to child stealing and two counts of intentionally causing injury, relating to fights she had with her lover.

County Court Chief Judge Michael Rozenes said child stealing was a very serious offence.

"Parents suffer great distress in cases worrying about what will ultimately happen to their child and it makes no difference to them whether the offender was ill or wicked," he said.

But noting reports from psychiatrists about the effect further prison time would have on Boundy, Judge Rozenes suspended the sentence.

Judge Rozenes sentenced Boundy, of Winchelsea, to two years' jail, wholly suspended for three years.

He also placed her on a community based order for two years on the causing injury charges.

Judge Rezenes needs to be sacked immediately for not enforcing the law. If his job is not to do that then what is it?

Judge Rezenes relied on psychiatrists' reports about the effect that prison time would have on the kidnapping lunatic. Did the Judge allow a victims' impact statement to be read to the court? If so then it obviously carried no weight. Were there psychiatrists' reports on the effect on the victims of such a sentence?

It is a travesty of justice that this disgusting woman should be treated so leniently by an obviously morally confused judge.

There's a reason that jails are called penitentiaries.

It's because that's where penitence is done. That's where the word penitentiary comes from.

Judges should remember that before they inflict such appalling decisions on society in general and the victims, especially, in particular.

(Nothing Follows)