Alarm at supposed youth gangs in Australia is not new. But the current response to claimed Sudanese gangs has a fresh and disturbing aspect: the attack by politicians and their media allies on judges and magistrates for lenient sentences and the granting of bail.
Since the British settlement of Australia, people of dominant ethnic and religious origins have complained of Irish gangs, Indigenous gangs, Italian gangs, Lebanese gangs, Vietnamese gangs and generic Muslim gangs. Politicians and media have regularly appealed to public fear and rage, demanding variously that members of the 'gangs' be birched, flogged, imprisoned, deported or shot.
As a result the communities targeted have become fearful and resentful. Their young people are alienated and society becomes more coarse and irrational. Politicians harvest a few votes and the media a few readers.
The reality is that in immigrant groups, particularly those whose experience has been traumatic, some young people are alienated from society and act criminally. They naturally gravitate to similarly alienated people from their own and other ethnic communities. But their forms of association lack the leadership and organisation that we associate with gangs.
Their behaviour needs to be addressed by helping them integrate into society, by good policing to deal with criminal behaviour, and by judicial and welfare processes that protect society and help the young people to change their ways. Voters can help by ensuring that politicians who wallow in mud are subsequently not elected.
The current attack on judicial discretion and the pressure to impose blanket penalties are concerning. They are part of a broader movement to remove from officials the discretion to measure the law to circumstances and to persons, with the effect that the will of the executive is made absolute.
It is now common for politicians to attack judges whose decisions do not meet government expectations, and for attorneys-general to refuse to defend judges against attack. This has harmful consequences. Precisely because judges are an easy populist target, the conventions of respect that surround them are important. They support the trust of citizens that the weakest in society will have recourse against tyranny and the abuse of power. That trust is fragile. It demands support in a democratic society, particularly from its elected representatives.
"Persons are not simply members of a class, and when the administration of law treats them as if they are, it harms society."
The same distaste of governments for discretion can be seen in the lack of flexibility