Excuse me, Kevin Rudd would like to make an Appointment

Probably largely un-noticed by the general population, there is a flurry of activity in legal circles about who will be the next Chief Justice of the High Court.

The speculation is spilling out into the mainstream media, with Chief Justice John Doyle, of the South Australian Supreme Court, rated as a 'top contender' by AdelaideNow

There is the strange anomaly that no South Australian has ever been appointed to the High Court bench, and our Chief Justice would make an excellent choice.

Of course they see things differently in the East!

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald seems to tip New South Wales Supreme Court Chief Justice Jim Spigelman.

And in Brisbane, the Courier Mail seems to thing that the best bet is Justice Patrick Keane, from the Queensland Court of Appeal.

Well, it could be worse - we could be in a country with elected Judges! Or one with no Judges at all!

Anger Mangement

These days it seems that we are beset by people in a rage of one sort or another. Road rage, telephone rage, my burger is cold rage etc etc.

Well, why don't we send all these people on an Anger Management course?

It seems that they might not be effective for everyone, like Justin Boudin in Minnesota! Weird Cases: temper, temper - Times Online

But to top it all off comes this tale of Judge Rage Weird Cases: judges at war - Times Online

Makes a bit of fist shaking at the Britannia Roundabout seem positively civilised!!

Police Commissioner Mal Hyde Agrees with Simon Slade

Sorry about the silly headline, but I could not resist. Would love to see that in The Advertiser one day.

Last Friday night, on ABC's Stateline, Commissioner Hyde made the same point that I have been making about the so-called Gang of 49: "It's not exactly a gang of 49. They're a particular targeted group of people. They're not all associated together and it's not formed like a tightly knit gang. They're just a group of associated high risk offenders."

It was also interesting to see the Commissioner's views on rehabilitation, given the different way that those views were represented in some print media.

Either we take the bull by the horns and commit to rehabilitation, or we sentence our society to a future of increased crime.

Prison Overcrowding

One of the results of the current government's view that "Tough on Crime" is the same thing as "Longer Prison Sentences," and the higher rates of remands in custody in South Australia is the overcrowding of our prisons.

One of my sources at Yatala Labour Prison has told me that 60% of the inmates there are on remand. Most people think that the Adelaide Remand Centre is where all remand prisoners are housed, and that the high security Yatala is only for sentenced prisoners. This means that remand prisoners are in the same prison as some of the State's most hardened criminals, no doubt learning all the wrong lessons!

With moves to change the law to make it harder for many accused to get bail, this situation is only set to get worse.

We might even get to a situation like the UK, where the government has asked the Judges to consider only sending the worst offenders to prison.