Rehabilitation must be balanced with punishment, deterrence, judge rules in review of case of teen who threw petrol bombs
- High Court chief judge finds teen’s original probation sentence was disproportionate to the severity of the arson charge
- The original magistrate in the case was swayed by her apparent high opinion of the youth when she chose to focus on rehabilitation, the ruling notes
Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal on Tuesday said rehabilitation cannot be the only consideration when sentencing young offenders who have committed serious crimes, such as the 15-year-old boy a magistrate called “an excellent kid” when she gave him probation for hurling petrol bombs.
In giving reasons for allowing the review of sentence, Mr Justice Jeremy Poon Shiu-chor, chief judge of the High Court, said arson was a serious crime that warranted greater consideration of the need to protect the public – as well as to punish, condemn and deter such a crime – over rehabilitation, even when sentencing young offenders.
Probation orders that emphasised rehabilitation were inherently disproportionate to an arson charge and therefore considered inappropriate, Poon continued, unless the case was particularly trifling, or involved extremely special circumstances or very strong mitigating factors.
But that was not the case with the boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, and who had admitted to a serious crime involving the dangerous use of three petrol bombs, which he hurled onto a deserted street in Yuen Long on January 8 to express his discontent with the government and to test his home-made explosives.
Poon said the original magistrate had erred in principle when she focused on the boy’s rehabilitation and neglected other relevant sentencing considerations.