Legal Studies: Sanctions

Legal Sutdies Unit 1/2

doli incapax (Latin)

Presuming that children aged 10-14 are not capable of committing crimes (lack understanding of right and wrong)

Jury properties

Made up of 12 ordinary people chosen at random to represent the community

Who is disqualified from a jury role?

1. Convicted and sentenced to 3 years or more

2. A person imprisioned for 3 or more months within 10 years

3. Detained in youth training centre or youthh residential centre

Advantages of juries

Provides an independent body and reflects common sense values, provides assess and information for ordinary citezens to workings of the legal system

Disadvantages of jureis

Costly, the judge is better able to decide on credibility, members may be influenced by emotional bias

Purppose of Sanctions

To deter, rehabilitate, denunciate, protect community

2 types of deterrence

General deterrence discourages people from committing an offence, specific deterrence discourages the offender from committing the same offence again

Rehabilitation vs Imprisionment

Prisons – Keep society safe but don’t help much with changing offenders. Used as a last option.

Rehabilitation – Helps offenders change, usually by teaching them new skills so they don’t reoffend.

Imprisionment definition

Sending someone to a centre where their freedom is restricted

Serving sentences

Concurrent sentences - served at the same time (most common type).

Comulative sentences - Served one after the other.

Community Correction Order (CCO)

On 10 January 2012, several sentencing options were removed and replaced with the Community Correction Order (CCO), a punishment mainly served in the .

Fines

The most common punishment is a fine, measured in penalty units to save time and costs of changing legislation

Factors considered in Sentencing

The maximum penalty, the type of crime and and the degree of criinality (e.g. premiditated crime or spur of the moment)