Last week, the Labor government passed mandatory minimum sentencing laws for terror and hate crimes in response to public attacks targeting Jewish people and organisations.

To dig into the move, Dylan Bird spoke to Professor of Criminology at ANU Lorana Bartels about the precedent and reasoning behind minimum sentencing, why it’s considered a bad policy decision, and what more effective solutions look like.

“This has become the go-to policy response – I think it does speak volumes that the Attorney General, a former senior lawyer and himself a member of the Jewish community, was arguing against [mandatory minimum sentencing] … I think that tells you something about what kind of populous decision-making and policy-making this was.”

You can read Lorana’s piece for The Conversation here.

Photo credit: supplied.