In one of my previous jobs many years ago, I had a client come to me for legal assistance. He was a hopeless heroin addict, and had been charged with home burglary for the third time. His reason for breaking into homes was to steal things, so he could sell them to buy more heroin.

Under the laws of our state, anyone convicted of their third home burglary offence must go to jail. It’s often referred to as the “three strikes and you’re in” law. So what this meant was, when this guy went to court, the magistrate could not do anything but send him to jail. That’s what the law required.

The problem was, in this case, that this guy needed something else. He had an addiction that he couldn’t beat, and what he really needed was to be taken away to a health facility of some sort, and helped to get over his addiction. He needed care. And once that addiction was beaten, he would most likely have returned to being a productive member of society.

Instead, what was going to happen was this man would be sent to jail, where he would get no support for his drug addiction (in fact, in all likelihood he would have got hold of more drugs in jail), no real rehabilitation, and possibly made more connections with the wrong kind of people.

I never saw that guy again, and who knows where he is now? I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not even alive anymore, considering what heroin does to people.

But let me balance that. I know that there needed to be consequences for what that man did. He needed to compensate the victims, pay back what he stole, and have some kind of punishment. I also know that the victim suffered. I’ve been the victim of home burglaries and violence, and I know the effect it can have. Nobody held a gun to this guy’s head and made him rob those homes. He hurt lots of people. But if we stop focussing on our need for punishment and look instead to what is the best way to heal our community of situations like this, the victims needed healing but so did the perpetrator. We had a chance to help him change his life but instead the magistrate was not allowed to do that – he/she had no choice but had to send him to prison.

Our state has recently introduced more of these kinds of laws, that automatically send people to jail for certain crimes. While I’m very much in favour of strong penalties for these crimes, and assistance/protection for victims, I don’t believe in taking away a judge’s right to make up their own mind about what is an appropriate sentence, after they’ve taken into account all of the facts. Jail is sometimes the right sentence, but other times it isn’t. While the intent behind mandatory sentencing is to provide justice, it can sometimes be unjust too.