30 May 2010At least one NSW politician is going to try to bring rationality, not slogans, to this fraught issue, writes Mike Steketee in the Australian

WHAT'S a state election without a full-blooded law-and-order auction? Voters in NSW, who go to the polls in 10 months, may be about to find out.

Liberal shadow attorney-general Greg Smith has called a halt to the ritual of parties bidding against each other for the toughest approach to crime. His belief is largely informed by his former life as a crown prosecutor and defies the hardline reputation he developed in his previous job as a deputy director of public prosecutions in NSW.

Smith tells Inquirer that, having seen successive election auctions produce multiple new categories of offences and punishments, "it turns you towards wanting to simplify the sentencing process and to question the effectiveness of just locking everybody up... You just ultimately wonder whether it does deter people from committing crimes...."

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Photo: Andrew Jeffrey