- Judicial officers undertake to be consistent in sentencing and decision making.
- The tools at the disposal of the modern judicial officer are vast.
- In Victoria, the Judicial Officers Information Network (JOIN) and in New South Wales (JIRS) offer a fast and accessible point for judicial officers to access:
- case law,
- legislation,
- bench books,
- Judicial College of Victoria publications,
- online journals and
- sentencing statistics.
- The system is a portal to key websites and resources, including sentencing statistics to aid consistency in sentencing.
- Demonstration of system via case study "Jason".
- Magistrates only spend an average of 7 minutes hearing a case. There are variations, they will spend more time sentencing something like Affray than something more straightforward like shoplifting.
- Magistrates don't try to just punish, they make sentencing packages which use a variety of features to address the underlying causes of crime.