In mid-2022 it’s bordering on bizarre to use Covid-19 as a reason for reducing a jail term

The Victorian justice system’s preoccupation with offenders’ rights is putting the interests of violent offenders ahead of victims and the community.

Thousands of prisoners in the Victorian system have received sentence reductions due to Covid.

The Victorian justice system is one in name only.

There are too many cases of the system prioritising the interests of violent offenders over what’s best for victims and the wider community.

This week a Victorian judge gave a pedophile guilty of horrific abuses a reduced jail term because of concerns over catching Covid-19 in prison.

Trevor Dunmall was found guilty of abusing young children including two counts of sexually penetrating a person aged under 12 year old.

But he’ll walk free from jail sooner than he should because he is a diabetic and at greater risk of having an adverse reaction to a Covid-19 infection.

Justice Felicity Hampel took into account the disabled pensioner’s poor health and the additional risks he may face from Covid-19.

“Imprisonment in a time of COVID is more onerous and a sentence must be reduced as a result of that,” Justice Hampel said earlier this week.

“There’s also the fear of being exposed to Covid in an environment where you no longer have control over who you see and when you see them.”

The County Court Justice imposed a sentence of eight and a half years but the 58-year-old child sex offender will be eligible for parole in five and a half years.

Here we have Covid-induced hysteria mixed with a preoccupation with offenders’ rights.

The result is a sentence that is manifestly inadequate given the harm caused to two innocent children.

It would’ve been hard to justify such leniency at the height of coronavirus madness when we knew relatively little about the virus and there was no vaccine.

But in mid-2022 it’s bordering on bizarre to use Covid-19 as a reason for reducing a jail term.

Dunmall isn’t the only beneficiary of a reduced jail term; in 2020 and early 2021, we learned that thousands of prisoners in the Victorian system had received sentence reductions due to Covid-19.