card sharps
We were talking the other day about suspended sentences and how they are not really jail sentences at all. They are pretend sentences. And, thankfully, the State Government is now looking at a proposal to scrap them. To look at other sentences like curfews, more community service, etcetera.
To make crims who don’t go to jail still feel some personal pain. Some deprivation of liberty.
There is a classic example of the futility of suspended sentences in the news today. Three croupiers at Crown Casino have walked free after stealing money from their employer. Thieves. That’s what they were. Thieves. And not one of them went to jail.
They got involved in a plan to conspire with a baccarat player, Alexis Benetton, to ignore his losing bets. One of them, Kim Tang, illegally gave the player $70,000 in two weeks in exchange for a secret commission. He was secretly paid more than $20,000 for his part in the scam.
And yet the Judge, Leo Hart, said he and his two cohorts, had acted solely out of greed.
Yes they did. It was money for jam. They stole money from their employer while taking their wages.
There was some cockamamie story that the judge bought, that they felt sorry for gamblers who lost. That Crown Casino was to blame. Yeah sure. If you feel that principled and passionate about an issue. Quit. Stop taking the dirty dollar.
Listen to this heart-on-the-sleeve rubbish from Judge Hart:
“You were disillusioned by gambling and its effects and made unauthorised payments, not only to Mr. Benetton but to others for whom you felt sorry”.
What a raft of crap. If Tang felt so heartbroken for gamblers why didn’t he give them the twenty grand he picked up from the scam? This was pure greed. Tang was a gambler himself. He saw a way to pay his debts at somebody else’s expense.
An employer got ripped off by greedy thieves who would have kept doing it if they hadn’t been sprung. They were lining their pockets illegally and a judge let’s them walk. It is a sick joke.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
©Copyright
Derryn Hinch 2005 |
