Can I ask both of you this question?
I've been shocked at how much meat-chart sentencing is coming out as government policy. I just call it “meat chart”; in other words, here is the offence and here is the mandatory minimum. That seems to be taking us away from thoughtful, firm, denunciatory sentencing, which is where I thought we were trying to be as a society.
Do you think this bill would benefit if it could be changed? I'm not so sure it could be, but would it be workable to have an augmented parole ineligibility, an augmented amount of time that was less than 25 years? In other words, if a judge thought that the crimes were horrendous and that the need for denunciation was there, the judge could add other shorter periods of additional parole ineligibility. Instead of having 25 plus 25, it could be 25 plus 10 or 25 plus 5, or something like that? Would that be workable? I'm not so sure we could even do it, but I would just ask you to comment.