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Judge takes sensible sentencing risk

  • February 16th, 2007

Chief Family Court Judge Peter Boshier did something yesterday for public respect for the judiciary, but not his prospects for retirement honours.

Saying the following cuts across the justice establishment’s efforts to soften us up for even softer sentencing:

“Twelve-year-olds, many of whom are committing quite heavy crimes, need to be more accountable than the present system is able to make them,” he said.

“What concerns me about the present situation is that for every 12-year-old criminal there is a victim. It’s the victim I am more concerned about.

“I believe we have to look for ways of making victims feel the system is more accountable and more potent. How exactly we do that is a matter for others but I definitely think the present system needs to be changed because it’s too difficult at the moment to make child offenders accountable.”

Despite my applause, Judge Boshier’s perhaps unwitting endorsement of Ron Mark MP’s current bill, again raises concern about politicisation of the judiciary.

There should be a convention providing a recognised process for eliciting the views of judges collectively on bills that they will have to implement, where their experience is especially pertinent. It should let us know the range and weight of judicial opinion, but perhaps not the opinions of individual judges.

Comments

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it is now 9 years since i any allowable had contact with my 11 year old son thanks to the family court, does this not shock boshier ?

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thats what an afternoons jog, sprint around panmure lagoon does to you, out of breath, excuse above mix up in wording, i,m puffed, out of oxygen..

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Oliver Twist (1838) is Charles Dickens’ second novel.

An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public’s attention to various contemporary social evils, including the workhouse, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals.

Oliver Twist is born into a life of poverty and misfortune. Orphaned almost from his first breath by his mother’s death in childbirth and his father’s conspicuous absence, Oliver is meagerly provided for under the terms of the Poor Law, and spends the first nine years of his life at a “baby farm” in the care of a woman named Mrs. Mann. Along with other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, Oliver is brought up with little food and few comforts.

HOWABOUT GIVING ALL THE KID,S A FATHER
BOSHIER ? (instead of giving us your oliver twist stories, you transparent nobody)

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