By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

However, the Labour­led government gave much less attention to those aspects ofthe Sentencing Act which would see an emphasis placed on community sanctionsand a reduction in sentence lengths. For instance, section 16(1) ("Sentencing Act,"2002: emphasis added) states:When considering the imposition of a sentence of imprisonment forany particular offence, the court must have regard to the desirabilityof keeping offenders in the community as far as that is practicableand consonant with the safety of the community.The message could not have been clearer: judges should use imprisonment as anoption of last resort. Offering even more of a contrast to its ‘tough on crime’rhetoric, however, was the inclusion of mitigating factors. The mitigating factors areset out under section 9(2) of the Sentencing Act 2002 (including aspects such as theage of the offender and the behaviour of the victim) and, when applied, have thepotential to produce sentences for murder which are substantially less than ten years.In spite of all the tough talk, the legislation even stipulated that courts ‘impose theleast restrictive outcome … appropriate in the circumstances’ ("Sentencing Act,"2002: s. 8(g), emphasis added). By using the word ‘outcome’ instead of ‘sentence’the provision immediately allows for alternative community sanctions (Roberts,2003). The government’s inclusion of restraint principles had undermined all the‘tough’ talk emanating from the government in the parliamentary debates. This wasall the more so when the Parole Act 2002 reduced parole eligibility for mostprisoners to one third of their sentence ("Parole Act," 2002: s. 84).The Labour­led government’s failure to deliver on punitivity was used by opposingparties who were straining to meet public expectations. In 2002, the National Partyused the failure to meet expectations as a catalyst for its own ‘tough’ law and orderpolicies, reinforcing the authority of public sentiment in penal policy. This can beseen in the National Party policy statement, which reads:69