Magistrate Gail Hubble has actually refused to free someone she justly calls an ‘appalling’ teenage offender

All hail magistrate Gail Hubble, or ‘Go To Jail Gail’, for adopting the old-fashioned idea of the punishment fitting the crime.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer.

But the fact that a magistrate has thrown the switch to the quaint, old-fashioned idea of the punishment fitting the crime is like the first burst of sunshine after a long, cold winter.

Magistrate Gail Hubble might not have had a nickname since her schooldays, if ever.

But just now she’s “Go To Jail Gail” simply for daring to do what so many of her fellow Bench sitters have ducked too long, for all their finger wagging and sabre rattling and tough chatter.

Children's Court magistrate Gail Hubble is daring to do what others have ducked for too long. Picture: David Geraghty

Magistrate Hubble has actually refused to free someone she justly calls an “appalling” teenage offender.

Imagine that.

Go straight to jail, says Gail.

What’s more, she criticised police for not opposing the young thug’s release over a two-month crime spree.

That second bit is telling.

Perhaps even an indictment of the cowed and compliant police culture that has crept in under a judicial system that reflects the social and legal views of an elite group that thought itself so much more enlightened than ordinary Victorians.

Magistrate Hubble criticised police for not opposing the young thug’s release. Picture: 7NEWS

So what happened?

Why did the seesaw tilt and jolt so suddenly?

It could just be that we have reached peak-youth crime — the level at which it starts to actually affect everyone living in Melbourne or the bigger regional cities.

Perhaps including even magistrates, judges, lawyers, senior bureaucrats and politicians.

In the last year or so, if a home invasion or an aggravated car theft hasn’t happened to you or someone in your family, you now consider yourself “lucky” because everyone knows a friend, neighbour or workmate whose home or property has been violated.

And everyone fears machetes and axes.

And the very real fear is that teenage criminals (the age and size of those who faked birth dates to go to war) are totally unafraid of the law.

Because the law, in its woke wisdom, has allowed repeat offenders to become “frequent flyers”, growing bolder and badder with every limp response to violence or the threat of it.

But maybe the worms have turned.

All hail Gail.