Scroop [2024] NSWDC 515

• Sentencing of offender for domestic violence offences
• Lengthy history of offending – first went into custody in 1993 as a young adult – after short time in community served significant period in custody for murder – when released repeatedly reoffended – spent only three of the last 33 years in the community – period of just over a year on parole prior to commission of these offences longest period he had spent in the community as an adult

[30] …He put that “success” relative to the rest of his life down to, very strict supervision and support. The material before me supports that conclusion. The support of a psychologist and parole officer continued but after the first 12 months it was not as intensive.

[31] Although he had a psychologist and parole officer to turn to, he did not seek their support when he began offending.

[32] This is, frankly, not surprising. Every study I have read, and my significant experience in dealing with people in custody since I started practice in the mid-1970s indicates that long terms of imprisonment have a generally negative impact on prisoners.

[33] Prison environments are extreme in many respects. They are physically and psychologically taxing. They impose rigid routines on offenders. They remove any capacity for individual decision making about aspects of the person’s ordinary life. Often, long terms of imprisonment lead to institutionalisation. This means that the longer a person spends in custody the less their ability to live independently and exercise personal responsibility. If a person has never lived a normal life in the community, it is very hard for them to learn how to lead a normal life on release. Prisoners existing and living in inherently violent environment learn to use aggression and violence, they lose self-worth, and they tend to blame others, and take out on others, their own failings. All of which occurred here: “Impacts of Imprisonment and Remand in Custody” (2022) The Bugmy Bar Book Project.