Brian Bourke interview 10 October 2005

When men were sentenced to death - I had a heap of people sentenced to death - that's an awful experience to walk up those stairs beside the Fourth Court over in the Supreme Court and the fellow's been sentenced to death. As Dick McGarvie said to me once when I came back, "What have you done?" I said "I've just had a bloke convicted of murder". He said. "Well I suppose you're in the same position as all of us. Anyone can get someone convicted of murder". It was a real down. But those people who were convicted in those days and you know they were then commuted, those people served 10 and 12 and 13 years mostly. Nowadays blokes convicted of murder get 27 years and 24 years and stuff like that to serve.

Sentences are much stronger. I heard that if everyone had an eye for an eye, the world would be blind and I think that's how we've gone. These talk show jerks that are on of a morning and that sort of stuff - that's just uninformed nonsense - it brings pressure to bear on courts and certainly on the government of the day. The moment you remove compassion or the moment you don't try and rehabilitate people, there's no point in going through this inordinate process. In fact, I think in a hundred years' time, this whole attitude that we've got now as to sentencing will be looked at as an unsuccessful social experience. It may be said of this time, it was a period when inordinate gaol sentences were served for no purpose at all.

Conducted for the Bar Oral History project by Juliette Brodsky in Owen Dixon Chambers East and filmed by Stewart Carter (People Pictures)