But the Herald Sun’s James Campbell, who broke the story on Monday morning, contributed his own analysis. The judges, he wrote, “need to be taken seriously”. “It isn’t just the judges … there is hardly a barrister - prosecutor or defender - who thinks [baseline sentencing] is a good idea.” Campbell is particularly concerned about the extra cost - especially as the government is simultaneously tightening the parole system, and abolishing home detention and suspended sentences. But, James, why is the government doing all this, if most knowledgeable stakeholders are opposed to the changes, and they are going to put a major strain on the state budget? Answer: because it reckons the new law will be a major vote-winner.

And why is that? Because an awful lot of Victorians believe (wrongly) that violent crime, murder and rape are on the increase, and that judges, cocooned in their ivory towers, haven’t a clue what’s going on out there. Almost every one of the 60-odd comments on Campbell’s original story scoffed at the judges’ concerns. Why is the government doing all this, if most stakeholders are opposed to the changes, and they are going to put a major strain on the state budget? Sack the Judges now! Get some who are not afraid to impose the toughest penalties possible every single time. Criminals are already running free because of lenient sentences…

And why do Victorians believe this stuff? Well, at least in large part because the Herald Sun has been telling them so for years. Crime stories sell newspapers - the more lurid, the better. And so does indignation about lenient sentences and soft parole boards. Veteran Hun editor and columnist Alan Howe has been harping on the theme for at least a decade. Just last year “Put simply,” he wrote with enviable certainty, “more men must spend more time” in tougher prisons - and judges, naturally, are “out of touch, issuing sentences that mock common values”. Back in 2011, it was the Herald Sun that helped Ted Baillieu’s new government (Attorney-General, Robert Clark) to consult the Victorian public about sentencing. The paper published, online and in hard copy, the government’s “My Views” Sentencing Survey, and encouraged its readers to take part.

It was no surprise to anyone that most survey participants dished out sentences, on the basis of a few lines of information, far more severe than those that would have been handed down by real-life judges. But it certainly provided excellent ammunition to Robert Clark’s “baseline sentencing” campaign. Of course, the Herald Sun isn’t alone. Virtually every popular newspaper, talkback radio host and TV current affairs show in the English-speaking world plays back to readers, listeners and viewers their own “commonsense” view that tougher penalties will lead to less crime. The fact that the hard evidence doesn’t support that conclusion is hardly ever reported - not, that is, without a sneer. Nor is research that shows that the more people know about an individual case, the less likely they are to think that the judge got it wrong. A study of 700 Tasmanian jurors in 2011 found that most of them believed, in general, that judges were too lenient. But asked about the particular case they’d been closely involved in, 90 per cent said that the judge’s sentence had been “very” or “fairly” appropriate.

The Herald Sun reported that survey, briefly, on page 38. Many of the commenters on James Campbell’s story on Monday were outraged by the sentence handed down a few days ago to the killer of 24-year-old Kara Doyle. Well sentencing someone to 4 years for murdering their girlfriend certainly doesn't do anything to stop crime either does it! Where is the justice for her family? In fact, The Age reported, Justice Michael Croucher was almost in tears when he described the impact of Kara’s death on her family. Mehmet Torun was sentenced to just eight years, with a non-parole period of five (of which he has already served one) because this wasn’t murder, it was accidental manslaughter. As even the prosecution accepted, Torun, high on ice, had forgotten that the gun he was waving around was loaded.

His behaviour, said the judge, while “extremely careless, very dangerous and profoundly stupid … did not involve any intended or foreseen actual violence or injury”. Torun had pleaded guilty to manslaughter, was genuinely remorseful, and was unlikely to offend again. Those are the decisions we pay judges to make - or used to. Incarceration rates are nearly twice as high in New South Wales as in Victoria. But no one seriously argues that its citizens are safer. Nevertheless, thanks to “baseline sentencing”, the state’s prison population will keep on rising, and so will its cost to the public. It’s a bit late now for the Herald Sun to be wondering if the new laws it has done so much to make politically desirable are actually a great idea. Jonathan Holmes is an Age columnist and a former presenter of the ABC’s Media Watch program.