A recent story in the Queensland Times regarding the exploits of Matthew Perry really bothers me. Long story short, the guy broke into a home to steal stuff, twice, while the family were home, and on the second occasion brought his wife to help carry stuff out.

I’d be interested to know who was taking care of the couples five children while the parents were off burglarising homes in the middle of the night. What are these people teaching their children, that it’s okay to steal, and okay to leave the kids alone all night while you do it? Not good.

But the real rub is the work of the judge in question. He says he recognised that Perry had no real history of dishonesty. Okay, but then why was he on PAROLE? If his prior offences were not matters of dishonesty, then perhaps they were violence related, so we have ourselves a dishonest violent thief, and judge lets him off with a suspended sentence.

It’s high time our esteemed government looked at sentencing options for crims like this Matthew Perry character. I have no problem with minor offences not getting jail time, especially if they have kids to look after, but we need to do more than send them home and wait for them to offend again.  Lets start by ensuring people on parole are wearing tracking bracelets, and lets at least give them curfews so they somewhat restricted in what they can do.

And then, when they offend again, lets throw them in prison so they can’t. Once is a mistake, but twice is intentional.