Right: Gerard Sin, a Perth bus driver, was assaulted by a passenger. Sin's injuries included being blinded in one eye. Sin's attacker was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment under WA's recently-introduced mandatory sentencing laws regarding attacks on police and other public officials, including transport workers..
Background information
Mandatory sentencing
A mandatory sentence is a fixed penalty for a particular offence. The term is often understood as referring to a mandatory minimum sentence, particularly one of imprisonment. For most criminal offences, the courts have the discretion to decide a person's sentence, based on the circumstances of each case. However, if a person is found guilty of an offence with a mandatory minimum penalty, the court cannot impose a sentence lower than that mandatory minimum.
Very few offences in Victoria carry a mandatory prison sentence. Examples include:
driving while suspended or disqualified on the second or subsequent occasion, which carries a mandatory minimum penalty of one month's imprisonment under section 30 of the Road Safety Act 1986 ; causing a fire with intent to cause damage, which carries a mandatory minimum penalty of 'imprisonment for a term of not less than one year and not more than twenty years' under section 39C of the Country Fire Authority Act 1958.
Mandatory Sentencing across Australia
Other states also have mandatory sentences for specific offences. Western Australia has a mandatory sentence of 12 months' imprisonment for assaulting a police officer, prison officer or public transport security staff. The Northern Territory introduced mandatory sentencing laws for property offences in 1997 but those laws were repealed in 2001.
Life imprisonment is mandatory for murder in Queensland, South Australia, and the Northern Territory. Life imprisonment is only mandatory in the other states for aircraft hijacking or with a minimum non-parole period of 20 years (25 years in South Australia and the Northern Territory) if a criminal is convicted of the murder of a police officer or public official.
Australia also has legislation allowing mandatory prison sentences of between five to 25 years for people smuggling, in addition to a fine of up to $500,000, and forfeiture and destruction of the vessel or aircraft used in the offence.
Youth detention
In 2007, Victoria was recorded as having the lowest rate of youth detention in the country. Just 9 per cent of Victorian youths aged 10-17 were sentenced to juvenile corrections institutions. This compared with a rate of more than 59.4 per cent in Western Australia and 29.1 per cent in Tasmania.