Kate Stewart: Justice systems needs to play fair

According to the dictionary, justice has a relatively basic definition.

Fair, just and impartial administration of the law. Sounds simple enough, in theory, but it's when it is put into practice that many of us take issue with it.

One man's justice may be considered an absolute insult or joke to someone else.
In an ideal world we'd like to think that any punishment is befitting of the crime but lately I've been having my own case of reasonable doubt.

One thing I always use to value in New Zealand was our entire legal system, from the cops to the courts and the judges who ran them.

It wasn't this big chaotic mess, like the US have, with federal law, state law, city law and county law, all doing their own thing with very little communication between the parties.

Our cops, courts and judges are all employed by one body, the rules are same nationwide, for me that used to mean benchmarks, continuity and consistency. It was reassuring, almost comforting.

Recently though, I've become a little disturbed by how blatantly inconsistent justice has become.

When it comes to punishment we are frequently alerted to the maximum penalty, which is seldom dished out but it also leaves me wondering if we have enough minimum penalties in place.

Are we leaving too much up to the judge's individual discretion?

Just this week saw the case of a teen girl, responsible for causing the death of an innocent tourist, in a car accident. She got a year's supervision and lost her licence for a few months.

Yet an Asian woman who was responsible for the death of a New Zealander, also in a road accident, was sentenced to jail. Doesn't sound very just or fair to me. Anything but.

I've seen drunk drivers, injuring/killing no one, receive jail time and lose their licence for multiple years in our own district court.

Then there's the case of the guy who hit a police officer with his car; no fatalities yet he gets 15 months imprisonment. Why? Because it was a cop?

I know each case is different and prior convictions and mitigating circumstances have to be taken into account but seriously there should be a minimum sentence for the taking of another life. Where's the bloody deterrent? The word remorse gets bandied around but are they truly remorseful for their crime or the just the fact they got caught?

Justice can not be subjective by its own definition. So why do we tolerate such vastly differing sentences for like crimes? If the whole system is based on equity is there even room for discretion? This disproportionate dishing out of justice has to stop.

For the system to truly fair our Judges and courts need to be on the same page when it comes to sentencing. It's not even about tougher sentencing, although others may disagree, it's about everyone playing on a level field. It's about victims and their families being reassured by the fact that a minimum appropriate penalty will be paid by the offender.

Justice, again by it's very definition, can not be based on emotive palaver like: " She's so sorry and she has to live with this for the rest of her life." At least she still has a life!
Where's the justice in that? Is there even really such a thing? I guess the jury is still out on that one.

Perhaps they should have defined the laws more clearly before they defined the word justice. That would have been the right and fair thing to do.

■ Kate Stewart is a politically incorrect columnist of no repute. investik8@gmail.com