Kerre Woodham: How can you have faith in a system in which the punishment never matches the crime?

About this episode

Kerre Woodham discusses the discrepancies in criminal sentencing and the challenges of having faith in the justice system.

It's just so infuriating when you see criminals who are given sentences that in no way reflect the heinous nature of their crime. It would be lovely, well not lovely, but it would be admirable to have faith in a justice system, not simply have to endure a legal system.  The Aussies know how to do it. There was a particularly ghastly pack rape of a young woman who had the misfortune to be walking home from a bus stop at the wrong place at the wrong time, and a gang of young men and one woman said, “Let's go and get ourselves a Sheila". And so this pack of homeless kids assaulted her, tortured her, gang raped her and murdered her. And they were sent to prison forever, until such time as they were physically incapacitated to no longer serve as a threat to the community or until they were dead.   The UN came galloping in and said you simply can't do that, they were children when they did this. Yeah, no. They were man enough to cause that sort of pain, harm, and damage to an innocent woman, man enough to serve the crime. They can give somebody 36 years for rape and murder because even though they're a teenager, even though they've never done anything like this before, the…

People in this episode

Host: Kerre Woodham

Topics covered

• justice system
• criminal sentencing
• crime severity
• public safety
• rehabilitation

Keywords

• justice system
• criminal sentencing
• rehabilitation
• public safety
• crime severity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: UN

Places: Australia, New Zealand

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