The bare prospect of deportation under s 501 of the Migration Act is not a mitigating factor on sentence; evidence of the subjective impact of the apprehension of deportation on the offender's experience of imprisonment is required. Lists of sentencing factors drawn from decided cases cannot be used as checklists where the absence of aggravating factors is treated as mitigating the offence. In the ACT, there is no requirement to establish exceptional hardship before the probable effect of a sentence on the offender's family can be taken into account, but the weight given to such hardship remains discretionary.
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