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A magistrate has fiercely criticised Victoria’s justice system from the bench, calling for it to be “completely and utterly revised” in an extraordinary tirade about crime rates.
Magistrate Brett Sonnet made the comments in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday afternoon as an 18-year-old woman sought bail while facing assault-related charges.
Prosecutors did not oppose her release, which Sonnet said meant his “hands are tied”. He allowed the woman back into the community until her next court date in December.
“It’s against my better judgment, but I’m granting bail,” he said. “As I say, these offences are serious. There’s already a previous incident where the victim suffered. Here we have another.”
Sonnet said the allegations related to a man being set upon as he returned to his bakery early one morning.
“In this court, it’s almost descended into the Wild West,” he said, also telling the woman’s defence lawyer: “When I started practice, your client would never have got bail.”
The magistrate also commented on recent statistics from the Insurance Council of Australia that revealed Victoria recorded almost twice as many car theft claims as the next highest state last financial year. The council found more cars were stolen or broken into in Melbourne than in all other capital cities combined.
“That is a truly staggering statistic,” Sonnet said. “Why should the community suffer in silence with all this random violence going around?”
He also broadly criticised submissions from some defence lawyers for their clients as “staggering” and said victims did not care whether an accused offender was young or had mental health issues.
“Serious offences are almost trivialised,” he said.
“It’s got to the stage where Victoria is almost the lawless capital of Australia. It’s nearly impossible to come across a person who hasn’t been affected by crime.”
Sonnet, a former Crown prosecutor, also lamented the slow pace of justice in Victoria, saying it took ages for cases to move from the Magistrates’ Court to the County Court for plea hearings. Young offenders were once fast-tracked within a month, he said.
“The criminal justice system needs to be completely and utterly revised. It is no longer fit for purpose. Victims suffer in silence in this state.”
The prosecutor agreed with the defence’s request that Sonnet include a bail condition for Youth Justice to assess the 18-year-old accused “to make sure that she’s connected across all the programs to rehabilitate”.
But the magistrate rejected this and expressed scepticism about a Youth Justice assessment’s effectiveness.
“Sometimes I’m told maximum contact [with Youth Justice] is 30 minutes. Sometimes I’m even told no physical contact – it’ll only be telephone contact,” Sonnet said.
He ordered the 18-year-old to reappear in court on December 2.
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Lachlan Abbott is a crime reporter at The Age. He was previously a city reporter and covered breaking news.Connect via email.From our partners
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