Knife criminals avoiding jail despite NSW crackdown doubling prison sentences

New laws were rushed in last year to tackle knives being carried in public — but new data shows the courts have only sent one person to jail after the NSW crackdown on knife crime.

The Minns government’s much-lauded crackdown on knife crime last year — doubling jail time for thugs carrying knives in public — appears to have fallen flat, with only one offender jailed in the first six months of its operation.

New sentencing figures obtained by One Nation MP Tania Mihailuk show lenient magistrates handed out 66 non-custodial sentences to NSW knife crims — despite the offences carrying a possible four-year jail term. Only one was sent to jail.

Ms Mihailuk said the result was a “disgrace” and the judiciary was “effectively ignoring the will of the parliament and the people”.

“This is not enough to deter wrongdoers from illegally carrying knives,” she said.

“The unwillingness of the judiciary to enact custodial sentences for knife crime is a disgrace.”

One Nation MP Tania Mihailuk, who is calling for the Minns Government to run a short parliamentary inquiry into the sentencing of knife crime. Picture: Tim Hunter.

The much-vaunted new laws came into effect in June last year, doubling the maximum jail time of two years to four years and increasing maximum fines for possession from $2200 to $4400, and for wielding a knife to $11,000.

However, no minimum sentence was set, despite warnings from One Nation MPs.

The fresh NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research data shows that of the 67 people caught with or wielding knives in public from June to December last year who faced the courts, 40 were fined, 14 got unsupervised community service, five got supervised ­community service and seven fell into the “other” category of either being juveniles and having the charges dismissed, or were convicted without penalty or no conviction recorded.

Only one got a custodial sentence.

Six people were killed during a stabbing rampage at Bondi Westfield in April. Picture: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

The revelations follow a spate of knife incidents in recent months, including last month’s horrific Westfield Bondi Junction mass stabbing, which claimed six lives.

Ms Mihailuk demanded an urgent parliamentary inquiry into the sentencing ­“failures”, but her proposal was not ­supported by the Minns ­government.

The NSW Sentencing Council is currently reviewing sentencing around knife, firearm and other weapon crimes, and Ms Mihailuk said the ­government cited this as a reason not to examine the issue via a parliamentary probe.

However, she argued the Sentencing Council’s review was already under way when the government rushed in the new laws last year.

“It’s cowardly for the Minns Labor government to avoid initiating a short, sharp, targeted inquiry into why the judiciary are shying away from enacting custodial sentences,” she said.

Knives have been linked to 17 deaths and 500 cases of non-domestic assaults between April 2022 and March 2023.

A NSW government spokesman said the state had “the highest penalties for knife ­possession in the country” and it hoped the law changes and more recent police “search and detect” powers would help stop people carrying knives in the community.

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