MAGISTRATES typically had more exposure to the realities of life than many politicians, and political attacks on lenient sentences were usually undeserved, the new NSW Chief Magistrate, Graeme Henson, has said.
Those on his bench were not soft and were far from out of touch, he added.
The Opposition has intensified criticism of courts and prosecutors in the lead-up to next year's election, with the Liberal Leader, Peter Debnam, vowing to "keep putting pressure on the judiciary".
The Premier, Morris Iemma, has said judges should "reflect community standards" when sentencing offenders.
Mr Henson said the only measure of inadequate sentences was the number of Crown appeals against them. "You'll find there are hardly any," he said.
There were 42 such appeals last year, according to figures published by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Half were dismissed, and five only partly upheld.
These Crown appeals comprised a tiny 0.02 per cent of the more than 204,000 criminal matters decided by magistrates in Local Courts during that period.
There were far more appeals by offenders against the severity of their sentences - about 5000 a year. About two-thirds of those appeals were upheld.
One was by the former Cronulla Sharks player, Tevita Latu, who had his eight months of periodic detention for breaking a woman's nose, imposed by a magistrate, reduced on appeal in July to 200 hours of community service.
The criticism is not just directed at magistrates.
This month, after much public criticism, prosecutors decided to appeal against a two-year suspended jail sentence imposed by a District Court judge on the youth who stabbed the 2GB newsreader Rowan Barker four times.
In an interview with the Herald, Mr Henson strongly defended magistrates against claims that they were too moderate and out of touch.
"We judge each case on its merits; politicians have different criteria," he said.
"When you judge each case on its merits, you find the information provided to the bench is far more detailed, far more considered, than simply the agenda from outside the courts, who simply have another axe to grind and another objective in mind."
Mr Henson assumed his new role three weeks ago after serving for 12 years as his predecessor's deputy.
He now manages the workhorse of the state's judicial system, a court with 136 magistrates and 152 courthouses which deals with 98 per cent of all criminal matters in NSW.
Most of its business goes without comment; but when it does, it is usually critical.
When sentences are viewed as lenient, magistrates are often said to be out of touch with community values.
Mr Henson rejected that view. "They're all members of society; they don't live in a closet, brought out at 9.30 every Monday morning," he said.
"They reflect, at least to my confidence, the general views and attitudes of society, as much as they must be necessarily constrained by the law itself.
"People forget, when they look at particular outcomes, that the law has to be applied to the circumstances that confront a particular judge or magistrate at a time," he said. "It can't be ignored."
