The Youth Justice Act 1992 (Qld) does not require the objective seriousness of an offence committed by a child to be minimised; the Act requires the nature and seriousness of the offence, the impact upon the victim, and proportionality between the sentence and the offence to be taken into account. A sentencing judge who adopts a mathematical approach of successive reductions from a starting point commits the error identified in Barbaro v The Queen, and this applies equally in youth justice sentencing. A 17-year-old offender should be regarded as a child on the cusp of adulthood for sentencing purposes.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 1 later case that cites this judgment.
1 of the 1 citing case carries a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.