Life Uncut - We Are Calling For Harsher Punishments for Violent Offenders While Some Victorian Prisoners Are Having Their Sentences Reduced. Uncut with Bianca Unwin

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Joining the podcast today is domestic violence advocate Bianca Unwin. Bianca has degrees in both criminology and psychological sciences and she is joining us today to speak about a loophole known as ���emergency management days’ that over 7000 prisoners could be using to receive reductions in their prison sentences. Many of these convicted offenders are violent and high risk offenders. Bianca’s sister Katie was a 29 year old mother of two when her partner Shane Robertson beat her to death while the couple’s child slept in a room next door. Shane was convicted but received a below average sentence of 19 years without parole. However, due to legislation enacted by the Victorian government allowing sentence reductions for prisoners under ‘emergency management days,’ a provision especially impactful during COVID-19, his sentence may be substantially reduced. Bianca joins the podcast today to speak about the contrast between what we all seem to be screaming from the rooftops in our fight to protect women, and the government’s leniency on reducing the sentence of violent criminals. We also speak about the inadequate rehabilitation of violent perpetrators and how we all need to be showing the government that these reductions in sentences are not what the community wants. Please take the time to click on this link and sign Bianca’s petition PLEASE SIGN THE CHANGE.ORG PETITION You can listen to Bianca's previous episode here! Some further resources are available below: Crimes Amendment (Remissions of Sentences) Bill 2021 Released Prisoners Returning to Prison CORRECTIONS ACT 1986 - SECT 58E Emergency management days Victorian prisoners get unfair sentence reductions as a result of COVID-19 restrictions, Opposition says   You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xx    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Gadigal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. Now we have such an important episode for you guys today. We're welcoming back to the podcast domestic violence advocate Bianca Unwin. Bianca, she's got a degree in both criminology and psychological sciences and she's joining us today to speak about something that I think most people

wouldn't be aware of. This is a loophole known as emergency management days, which over 7,000 prisoners could be using to receive reductions in their prison sentences. And today Bianca's going to talk to us about why this is happening, how it will affect so many people who have fought incredibly hard to have these people, the people that have murdered their loved ones, to have them locked up. It's just such a slap in the face to those families. Yeah. And so many of these convicted offenders that Bianca is talking about are violent and high risk offenders. And in the case of Bianca Unwin, this is a very, very personal story for her. And we'll get into all of the details around it. But it is because the perpetrator, the murderer of her sister is also able to access

EMDs, these reductions in sentencing. And it is something that her and her entire family are lobbying against. Let's get into the chat with Bianca. Now, a lot of you that have been following Life Uncut for a while will remember Bianca and you will remember Bianca's story about her beautiful sister, Katie. And I wish we were having you back on the podcast today, Bianca, for better circumstances and better reasons but something truly horrific is happening in the state of Victoria right now surrounding prison sentences and it is just something that when Laura and I read about it stopped us in our tracks I cannot imagine how you feel so we want to have you on the podcast today to tell your story and talk about what's happening and try and put a stop

to what is about to happen Bianca welcome back thank you thank you for having me back on Bianca There's so many people. I mean, you spoke so beautifully about your sister Katie the last time that you were on the podcast and she's someone who's incredibly close to you. This has been such a, and I can only imagine for yourself, it's been such a unique period in history. I think where everybody is talking about domestic violence at the moment, it really feels like people are actually finally listening and that the lawmakers are finally listening. Whereas when you contacted us and told us what was happening in the state of Victoria, it seemed like it couldn't possibly be the case when you hear about all of the changes in legislations that are being made at the moment

around domestic violence. For anyone who doesn't know your story, and we will obviously link our original interview that we did with you in the show notes for anyone who wants to go back and listen to the whole thing. But can you tell us a little bit about Katie and what happened to her? Yeah, of course. So Katie was my big sister. She was a mother of two. She was just a bubbly, happy personality. She was working really hard to provide for her children. Everything she did was for them. She entered into a relationship in around 2015 and was the happiest we'd ever seen her. We honestly thought like this was such a great thing for her. We never expected that in 2018, her partner Shane Robertson would brutally murder her in her son's bedroom whilst her daughter

was sleeping next door. So that's, yeah, that's what happened to Katie. She lost her life at the hands of someone who was supposed to protect and love her were there any indications from katie herself like has she ever said anything that was a little bit worrying to you guys or had you ever seen any behavior that was questionable or was this so out of the blue for you it was so out of the blue for us but that's purely because in hindsight we were naive we were naive to the term coercive control we were naive to the fact that domestic violence isn't always physical and whether or not there was any physical elements in Katie's relationship we aren't aware of that but what we are aware of is that there was controlling and jealous behavior there was

name calling there was a variety of behaviors monitoring surveilling you know stalking essentially that was occurring in her private life monitoring her social media just things that you wouldn't attribute to violence but it is a form of violence and that's the type of domestic violence Katie experienced was coercive control and it can be the worst type of violence because it does lead to this sort of outcome. When we spoke last time, you mentioned that Katie was trying to leave and there's been so many conversations around when is the most dangerous time in a domestic violence situation is often when the victim is trying to leave the perpetrator. How did you know that that was the time that she decided that she'd had enough in the relationship?

she had told us a few times that she had had enough you know she was over it especially when she was at our house that day that very day he was harassing her calling her where are you what are you doing why aren't you home so we knew that she'd had a gutful and we actually encouraged her we're like you deserve better you know you shouldn't be with him my mum said he's the worst boyfriend you've ever had like there was a lot of discussion about it but nothing we never thought anything more sinister was going to happen we never thought that he was capable of this and we actually never feared for Katie in that sense we know that she actually did pack her bag and leave her bag was packed when the police went in there and found her body her bag was packed at the front

door she had left the house that night she'd actually got in the car and left and said she was going to my parents house but she returned because her daughter was sleeping at home and obviously being a mum your primary focus is your children so she went back home you know a fight was continuing and that's how we know we know that she was leaving she told him she was leaving he texted his mother and said she was trying to leave me i've done it i've bashed her brains in there's brains everywhere so like he even admitted that is the reasoning as to why he committed the crime because she wanted to leave this is the thing we keep reiterating and we just can't say enough this is why people can't leave like it's so infuriating when people say if she's in a

dangerous situation. It was her fault. She should have just left. She doesn't have to be there because people cannot leave. A, they have nowhere to go or B, they physically can't leave the house because this is what happens. Can we go back to Shane's conviction? Can you talk us through the court proceedings and what actually happened at that time? The court process for us was quite simple. He pled guilty early on. And as I stated before, he texted his mother and admitted guilt by saying, I've done it. He also fled from the crime scene and the police apprehended him hours afterwards so there was no doubt that he was guilty but you still have to go through that process of the plea so he pled guilty and because of that early guilty plea the courts and the

justice system sees it as a sign of remorse and i cannot stress this enough it is not a sign of remorse accepting accountability for a crime you have committed does not mean you are sorry for doing it and i can't stress this enough we have not had a single ounce of remorse from him there is no remorse but because the courts see it that way he was offered a discount as some would say on his sentence so at the time he hadn't been sentenced but he already knew as an incentive that because he pled guilty his sentence was going to be lesser than had he pled not guilty so then when we did get to the sentencing Katie's case was the second case to be heard under standard sentencing schemes so the standard sentencing is essentially trying to do a

benchmark of middle range offending so you have your maximum your middle range and you know your lower kind of offending and basically the scheme was in response to society's kind of uproar with the very weak sentencing of criminals of the violent offenses that it wasn't reflective of what the community was so this sentencing scheme katie was the second one under this and we had really high hopes for it we thought this is great middle range offending is 25 years because the maximum for murder is life yeah so they can get above 25 years and we're like middle range 25 years this is great he got sentenced to 24 years with a non-parole period of 19 he'd already at the time of sentencing served one year in remand from the time of her murder so that was already

off the 19 years so he was sitting at 18 years it's now been six years since then which is so unfair like you took an entire lifetime from someone and someone's family it's just so infuriating the fact that they say he showed remorse because he pled guilty he pled guilty because he admitted it like he had messaged his mom and admitted to the crime was his mom helpful in the conviction you know was she sort of like I can't believe you've done this or was she trying to protect him there was about a 10 minute gap I believe around that time between him letting her know what he had done and them calling for help wow yeah there was no concern there that is the biggest thing is from that whole side there has been no concern there was no

concern for Katie's welfare nothing when it comes to sentencing from a judge and I think it's you know, sentencing is one thing, but also they take a moment to describe the crimes, at least to try and reflect on what's been presented to them. What did the judge have to say? So during sentencing, he detailed how horrific he was. He said that it was brutally savage. He listed the amount of times that she was documented being struck, bludgeoned to death, but they couldn't determine it fully because of the severity. He mentioned the fact that we had to use dental records to identify her. He mentioned the controlling and possessive nature in which he harassed my sister for months leading up to her murder. He stated that it was above

average offending. He said that it was quite significant. We were just listening and I was sitting there next to my mum and I just remember going, this is great. Like it's above average offending. This is significant. They're listing how horrible this is. And then he got sentenced with a below middle range seriousness. He got less than 25 years. How does that happen? And is there anything that you can do as the family advocating for a victim that you can do to change that? You know, I mean, people can appeal their sentencing. Is there anything that you were able to do to try and have that reassessed to have a more harsh sentence as soon as we heard it and we left the court we asked the public prosecutions if we could appeal that sentence because we were

like they're saying it's excessive it's the second one under this act this will act as a precedence like this will be something that other cases follow suit and lead as an example and we were like this isn't reflective he wasn't remorseful there is nothing but they listed that you know he had high hopes of rehabilitation he has a good character from all these character references he had no prior history that means nothing in this case coercive control wasn't even criminalized so how could he have a prior history but a history doesn't matter you still took someone's life in the most violent way 100 so all of these things are taken into consideration when sentencing and they ultimately bring down the sentence and like hearing just the level

of offending the fact that he fled like let's revisit that he actually left the scene he didn't ask for help he didn't realize that what he did was wrong he didn't go oh i lost control in that moment he also didn't stop beating her like he did it excessively he could have stopped after one hit like there is so many ways of showing that you are remorseful and there are so many ways of showing that this was not even premeditated because like he went into that room with a dumbbell. Baker, I know that that must have been such a truly horrific time for your family, feeling so disappointed and so let down by the legal system.

When you did ask if there was something that you were able to do to have that sentencing increased, what was the outcome of that? Flat out, no. Straight away, right there and then. Didn't even take it any further. They just told us we will not be pursuing that. because it's not possible to, or because they weren't allowing you the option to? We honestly didn't get an answer. It was just, they're the ones that have to pursue it.

They think it was justified. In your experience, and I know that, you know, you've had such a long history now in being exposed to conversations around domestic violence, to being exposed to the legal system that surrounds domestic violence. Do you think that often these types of cases are sentenced in a more lenient way than if they were assault or a murder in a different circumstance? 100%. And if you look at previous case studies and the sentencing judgments, it's reflective of that.

So Katie's was 24 years with a non-parole of 19. Celeste Mano, who was murdered by an ex-work colleague who was stalking, harassing her, you know, she was murdered in her home. He got 36 years with a non-parole period of 30. Aya Masari, she was murdered walking home from a comedy festival. her murderer got 36 years with a non-parole of 30. But there's almost this expectation that because you've chosen to be in a relationship with the person that that sentencing is less.

On the Supreme Court website, as recent as November last year, there was a case in which a murderer was sentenced to 24 years with a non-parole of 19, identical to Katie's, domestic violence. Another one, 24 years with a non-parole of 17, domestic violence. There is a clear discrepancy. the only thing you can reduce from that is that the legal system does not see domestic violence as being as heinous or as unforgivable as what say a random attack is and the only thing that i think that you can take away from that is well when you're in a relationship with someone bad

things can sometimes happen people can have big emotions people can react in ways that they don't have control over it's like we almost have this apology slash acceptance it's a victim blaming notion. It's because they call it a crime of passion, which I detest the term because there's nothing passionate about that. No. The biggest thing is they talk about strangers, the violation of someone's human rights. It's a violation of someone's trust. What is more violating than having someone in your own home who is supposed to protect you? I know that I would not feel comfortable if a stranger was in my home. That's not violating my trust. I already am uneasy. but to be living with someone that is a big violation of trust and to put the victim blaming

notion and that's reflective in the sentences and it's reflective in the judges as well and the way that they approach the sentencing and that's why we're going to continue to have these conversations and today's conversation again we're going to link Bianca and Katie's entire story with the episode and I please I urge you to go and listen to that it's in the show notes but for now we're going to talk about Victoria and this legislation that is happening. So during COVID lockdowns, the Victorian prison system started to implement something called EMD, which is an emergency management day within the prisons. Can you please explain to us, Bianca, what an EMD is exactly and what this new legislation is about? So the legislation itself is actually not new. The legislation itself was

implemented back in the 90s. So that's how long it's been actively happening in Victoria. The emergency management days are essentially kind of a goodwill of prisoners behaving themselves and keeping order in the prisons during events where the prison cannot operate correctly. So in the event of, say, a prison fire or in the event of staff shortages, this is where they can claim days off their sentence because they were locked or confined to their cell or they didn't get their outdoor recreational time or they didn't get to see family or friends so because they were hindered in the way that the prison ran they are compensated with a day off their sentence but it's not just a day for every day or half day that they are impacted by one of these activities

they get four days off their prison sentence talk us through what impact COVID had on that with COVID the legislation says for emergencies but I don't think anyone could have predicted the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in Victoria, the amount of days that we were locked down, I don't think that that could have ever been accounted for in any type of legislation. However, they haven't amended that legislation to account for that. So you can imagine that prior to COVID, they were discussing that the average offender would get about 26 days off their sentence. We're looking at about 14 months off prisoner sentences at the moment because it's an accruable thing so if there's another pandemic they get more emergency management days which

when you think about the comparative life that everyone was living in that time every person in melbourne was locked in their homes every person in melbourne was impeded and had their freedoms and had their right to be able to go outside and enjoy the sunshine and everything else taken away from them for the greater good of the whole country and they all suffered but the people who have been imprisoned who have full sentences are being compensated for the circumstances of which the lockdown had on them, which is just insane. I mean, you just mentioned that cumulatively how many months people are going to shave off their prison sentences, but I have some alarming statistics here.

David Southwick, the Shadow Minister for Corrections, this statistic was provided by the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, showed that almost 5,000 prisoners accumulated a total of 900 years off their sentence during COVID lockdown, 900 years just in that lockdown. That is how many years are going to be shaved off these prison sentences. This is absolutely disgraceful. So how many months does it look like Shane is going

to have off his sentence? At the moment, he is getting 427 days off of his sentence. And mind you, he had only been in prison for one year prior to COVID happening so he was impacted by COVID yes 100% we all were we all were but he gets 427 days off his sentence at the moment and I can't stress that enough because there will be other emergencies that come up and this legislation is there for them to take advantage of and to claim those days back so he's got 427 days off his sentence and we don't get 427 days back with Katie Yeah. David Southwick goes on to say, prison visits were suspended during the pandemic to

prevent the spread of the disease. So inmates were given a $10 a week phone credit for phone allowance so that they could stay in touch with family and friends. And as of December 15 last year, $2.48 million was spent on the weekly phone allowance and $309,777 was spent purchasing 591 tablets so that these prisoners could make their video calls and because of this inconvenience that these prisoners were not allowed to make a phone call to their family we are shaving time off their prison sentence have i got that right yes that is correct and the more alarming thing is that during that time programs within the prisons ceased as well including rehabilitation they couldn't have in-person visits you know everything kind of

came to a halt during COVID. So the effect of rehabilitation programs, mental health services in there, all these types of things that are in there to help them be ready to come out into the community at this time that they're meant to be released were either impacted or stopped completely. And yet let's let them out earlier. How are you managing this as a family now? Because I mean, obviously you're upset and obviously this is so frightening, but there's more things at play here. we were just speaking a little bit earlier around Katie's children you know she has two children and one of them resides with your parents what impact is that going to have on you as a family if he is released earlier it's going to be a massive impact on us like it already is when I got the

news I actually cried and if you could hear the voicemail that I left my dad I think he was wondering what the hell had happened because I was just a blubbering mess the impact is huge at the moment he's going to be away until the kids are adults and that is the main objective but if they keep reducing sentences who knows who knows what this means but they're diminishing the life of victims and we have to tell katie's children that her life is less than because of covid restrictions because of emergency management days it's mind-boggling and i Honestly, our family is so mad. We're petitioning, we're doing all these things

and to get through this as a family, we've kind of admitted defeat to an extent. My dad works in the Victim Survivors Advisory Council in Victoria. He works alongside the government. He was appointed by the government for his lived experiences and we're not getting anywhere. This accumulation of days off, is this something that is applicable to all inmates across all prisons within Victoria?

So it's irrelevant of the crimes, irrelevant of what they have been put in prison for. Every prisoner has access to this. Every prisoner has access to this as long as they have displayed good behaviour in prison. So any prisoner that includes child sex offenders, irregular sex offenders, incredibly violent people, terrorists, like you're getting all these types of high risk offenders able to access reduction in days and be out in society earlier there have been cases that are documented when i was doing my research in regards to federal offenders in victoria because they are they were eligible as well so people convicted under the federal law if they reside in victoria

because that's where the state has our own laws they were eligible for their emergency management days and one person who was suspected of terrorism actually got to his sentencing day and because of the emergency management days he walked three hours later what despite being sentenced that day and it's all documented in a parliamentary findings about a bill in which they were trying to remove federal offenders being allowed to have emergency management days but there's not much chat about state offenders because Victoria allows it and has since the 90s. So what is it that you and your family are doing at the moment? I know you say you feel as though you've lost hope but what is it so far that you are lobbying for and how can people get involved to try and make as

much noise about this as possible? So firstly I've started a petition that's just to kind of draw them out and make the MPs, make the Premier of Victoria, make the Department of Justice actually listen to us. We need a review of the legislation. We need those days to be revoked for violent and high-risk offenders. They should not be eligible. It needs to be revoked entirely. The legislation 100% needs to be reviewed and needs to reflect future events such as pandemics because it did not and now we've got excessive days coming off of prisoner sentences. reach out to your MPs. My dad has reached out to multiple MPs and has heard nothing. He even wrote a letter personally to the Premier of Victoria, Jacinta Allen, and he is still awaiting a response

and he did that at the start of the year, not start of the year, sorry, start of May after we sat alongside her at the Safe Steps vigil. That makes me so fucking mad and I'm sure it does everyone else that's listening. As a politician, I'm sure that they receive letters all the time. They have a whole cabinet of people who are there to help facilitate this. But don't sit with someone's family, understand the grief that they have experienced, and then ignore an outreach. Even if you cannot change the legislations, but to completely ignore that letter when it comes in, I can only imagine what that means to your family and how dismissive and insignificant that must make you feel. But that is their literal jobs, is to help to make this country

a better place? The Victorian government, on the week that we attended that rally of no violence that happened across the whole nation, we attended the one in Melbourne. Three days later, we attended the Safe Steps vigil in Domestic Violence Awareness Month. My dad gave a speech because he's a part of VSAC. He stood up there and spoke with all these MPs, the Premier of Victoria standing there, all while they knew that two days later, we were going to be notified that Shane Robertson was getting 427 days off his sentence they knew that this legislation was there they knew that these notifications were being distributed and it's not just our family it's not just happening now it's happened over the course of years we've just found out about it we've just been notified

by it so now we're mad and we're like you sat with us you shook my dad's hand you shook my dad's hand and you knew you heard him say that 19 years is not enough we're not showing enough deterrence we're not doing enough and then we sit there and we go why is male perpetrated violence getting worse why is violence in this country as a whole getting worse why are we losing so many women in domestic violence cases why and then he goes and then you go and do something like this yeah i've signed your petition and we plan on helping you make a lot more noise that's the whole point of this this is only happening in victoria but this affects everybody if we are letting convicted murderers, child sex offenders, terrorists be released early without the proper rehabilitation

because of COVID in these days, then this is a problem for everybody. So what we do want people to do today is we are going to be putting these petitions up. We are going to be putting them on all of our social media. It's going to be in the show notes. And sorry, I'm trying not to get upset for you, but like now is the time as women that we can make a change. So I don't want you to listen to this episode and be mad and upset and not do anything about it. Like now is the time that we can actually go and get something done. So, Bianca, we're going to put all the links in for you for anything that you need for your legislation, for your petitions.

Is there anything else that people can do to try and stop what's happening right now? Just make noise. You've got to complain. You've got to tell them that we as a society do not accept this because ultimately, and this was reflected when Katie was sentenced by Justice John Champion, he decided that he didn't need to apply the standard sentencing scheme.

And if I can just find it, it is a quote, and this literally reiterates how the system is there for criminals and not victims. After saying that standard sentencing is so important in establishing order in prisons, order in society, Justice John Champion spoke out about how the new sentencing scheme wasn't of a legal effect. it wasn't within legislation and i quote it is not imperative to which i must have regard

so as he undermined what everyone was trying to achieve by getting standard sentencing happening he opted to not have regard to it in the second case of standard sentencing and then he's opted in that moment to keep the status quo and now katie's case is a precedence and domestic violence cases are being sentenced under what Katie was sentenced so it's a whole flawed system within and that literally shows you we're not getting the judges we're not getting the MPs we're not getting the government as a whole to see reflectively what the community wants and it's all safe face we can have national cabinet meetings we can say we're going to do a 10-year plan people are dying now and we're going to go and release prisoners early but this is the big

question because there has been so much noise recently. I mean, every radio station, every podcast, like everyone is talking about domestic violence in a way that for as long as we've been doing this podcast and we've had these conversations over the past five years, this is the first time that it feels like, well, everyone is now talking about it. But has it so far to you? Does it feel as though it's made any tangible difference? At this point, I'm filled with rage and disappointment with my government specifically so it to me hasn't felt like we're making change it feels like a lot of the government's response such as the national cabinet meeting and all the implementations that they're talking about doing are safe face tactics they're not immediate plans

but when I speak to my dad who is within the government and he is seeing all the stuff happening he acknowledges that there is heaps of funding going into it like Victoria is doing really well at putting funding into all these areas and data and they have actioned the recommendations all the recommendations from the royal commission they've actioned them it doesn't mean that there has been any meaningful or significant change but they've acknowledged it they've actioned it and they've got plans to do things yeah but like my dad said we need to have this at a national level i don't understand why courts are running based on state jurisdiction because why can one murderer in one state get something,

another murderer in another state get something, and then in Victoria, hey, here you go, here's your get-out-of-free-jail card that doesn't apply to any other state. And it's just like we need to hit the ground running. We need to do stuff now. We need to hold perpetrators to account. Stop saying that it is on us to call out bad behaviour when what

are the prisons doing right now? What is Corrections Victoria doing right now? They are rewarding prisoners for behaving well in prison. yeah as if it's up to the prisoners to decide how a prison operates but also it's like COVID was such an unprecedented time for every single person and this legislation that was made back in the 90s didn't account for something that was completely unprecedented and it needs to be updated to account for for a life that no one thought that they were going to live for two and a half years and those changes need to be implemented to save people and not just to have

the rehabilitation but also to have the punishment that goes alongside exactly when a massive heinous crime has been committed because the argument is and i've posted on tiktok and the main argument is prison isn't for punishment well it's not really for rehabilitation either at the moment because our recidivism rate is quite high like between 2020 and 2021 when prisoners were released 39.5 percent of prisoners released in 2020 and 2021 return to prison within two years that's nearly 40 so i'm sorry where's the re and over 40 percent return to corrective services meaning corrections orders all those types of things so okay rehabilitation is prison but you're not rehabilitating them and you're rewarding them for playing nice in prison like the whole point of

prison is that you're supposed to make them become better people rehabilitate them so they can come into society Bianca has Shane ever and I know you said he was not remorseful at the time it's now been how many years since your sister Katie was killed six six years and a bit now yeah has he ever shown remorse to your family has he ever shown remorse for what he did oh god no no never he has never showed remorse he has never held accountability the blaming notion was still there It was because she was leaving me. It was because she was leaving me. It was because I thought she was cheating.

Like, it was never there. He feels sorry for himself. And the fact that he applied for these emergency management days speaks volumes. If you were remorseful, stick out your sentence. It's there for a reason. But if he's still saying, if his reason for what he did for brutally beating your sister to death was because she was leaving, what happens when he comes out and he gets a girlfriend and she tries to leave him?

if he still thinks that's okay, what happens then? The judge literally said it himself that there was no way of knowing that he was going to commit this crime. There was no way of knowing that it was going to escalate. There was no way of knowing why in that moment he literally, and I'm like, is that not dangerous? How do you rehabilitate someone when you don't know why they did what they did? What made them do that in that moment? Yeah, but it's that whole adage and it's that attitude that leans into this, oh, well, he just snapped. And people don't snap in that way. that's the problem it is the cumulative bad behavior yeah and that's why we need a complete overhaul of the justice system of the courts of the judges we need people who reflect that there's

no victim blaming that there was a sentence done today in Melbourne and I'm hoping that this is a sign that things are changing but he was sentenced with 31 years with a non-parole of 25 for murdering his ex-partner, by a female judge, the same female judge that gave the 36th year with a non-parole of 30. So why is it taking female judges to be able to call out and say, don't have crocodile tears, you've shown no remorse, which is what this judge said in this hearing today. You showed no remorse, stop with the crocodile tears. And then to actually follow through and give a sentence, which mind you is still significantly less than if it was a stranger who had killed her. But it is still significantly more. The non-parole period is more than the

maximum sentence for Shane. Do you know what life is like for Shane in the prison? And the reason I say this is somebody that I went to school with murdered somebody. We were not close friends, but I went through school with him since primary school. And he beat somebody to death as well, a man. I remember seeing, I didn't even know I was friends with him on Facebook still. I don't use Facebook right but I remember hearing about it such and such went to prison a few years had gone past and I remember seeing something pop up that was from him in the prison it was a status update and it was like hi everyone sorry I've been offline for a while they took my internet services but I'm back thanks for everyone that wished me happy birthday and I was like what the hell I'm

like how is this person that murdered someone how is he doing Facebook status updates from prison and I'm like, what is going on in these prisons? Do you know what life is like for Shane in the prison system? I don't know explicitly. And since I finished my degree in criminology, I haven't really kept up with what's changed in the prison system, but I do know that it is a pretty cushy life. Like they do have access to, you know, Netflix and things like that. They do have access to tablets, you know, they can get education in there that otherwise would cost all of us out in the real world you know um and they get free food they get to have a nice warm bed they get to live life better than homeless people do they get to live life better than a lot of

people during this cost of living crisis because they've got access to things that a lot of people can't have access to which is like food it's not a very harsh lifestyle and i don't believe rewarding them constantly is showing results either but also on the emergency management days just to really blow your mind some more emergency management days can be applied to prisoners when the day of their release falls on a public holiday so if it falls on a public holiday they can't be released so they have to be released earlier and the reasoning is that they are concerned that if someone is released on a public holiday when Centrelink or supermarkets are closed that they will re-offend. Oh my god. So we give them more time off because there's a worry that

they will re-offend. Yeah but if you're worried they're going to re-offend because it's a public holiday the person's going to go and re-offend far more severely. Why are you letting people out who are not rehabilitated who you yourselves do not trust to not re-offend that you then have to give them so say they get released on a public holiday on a Monday well like Easter that Easter public holiday weekend they'd be out on that Thursday because the Friday's public holiday the Monday they'd be out on that Thursday instead of going hey all right well we'll put you back one day it's just it is honestly none of it makes sense it's mind-boggling I don't really understand what they're hoping to achieve with this I'm so sorry because there's one thing in losing your

sister and there's another thing in feeling so incredibly let down by the system that's supposed to bring justice to something that is just horrific and the fact that this is now six years on and you are still continuously being let down by a system that's supposed to be created to support victims is horrible and like we said we'll put all of those links in the show notes we hope that everyone who has been so affected by these conversations around domestic violence goes signs the petition gets involved in ways that they can because it's only with harsher sentencing It's only with taking this really seriously, not just from a community level, but from a government level, that actual changes around domestic violence is going to change in this

country. And please remember, this affects everyone. Even if domestic violence doesn't or hasn't directly affected you, releasing these horrific people back into society early without rehabilitation will affect everyone. Well, they're releasing people that aren't even just domestic. It's everyone who's committed a crime. Yeah. so thank you thank you so much thank you for having me