Robert Owen: DPP makes explosive claim that judges imposing ‘manifestly inadequate’ sentences on WA cases

WA’s top prosecutor has taken a swipe at District Court judges he says are too often imposing “manifestly inadequate” sentences for some of the State’s most serious crimes. Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Owen made the explosive claim in his office’s latest annual report, tabled in Parliament this week, after highlighting a 20 per cent spike in overall appeals in the past financial year. “The last decade has also seen a significant increase in the number of appeals commenced by the Director against manifestly inadequate sentences imposed by, primarily, judges of the District Court,” the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ report said. “In 2025, the Director commenced 17 such appeals.” Fourteen of those appeals were successful. The District Court deals with some of WA’s most heinous crimes including sexual assault, drug offences, burglary, serious assault, major fraud and commercial theft. And it is the DPP’s appeals team that takes carriage of appealing sentences the Director believes are “erroneously low” or otherwise in need of redress. One such matter saw the WA Court of Appeal effectively double former teacher and convicted child sex offender Nicholas Visser’s jail sentence after he was convicted of 14 offences related to the abuse of a teenage student. The former high school teacher subjected his 15-year-old victim to vile abuse over eight-and-a-half months. He was initially handed a jail term of four-and-a-half years, with parole eligibility after two-and-a-half years. Following an appeal led by Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Justin Whalley, the court ruled the original sentence was “erroneously lenient” and upped it to seven years, with eligibility for parole after five. “The offending was brazen, with (several counts) being committed on school grounds and, on some occasions, during schooltime,” the appeal judges said in their decision. The court also said Mr Whalley submitted Visser’s offending “amounted to a persistent, prolonged, and serious abuse of the trust that exists between teacher and pupil”, and that he was “without remorse for, or insight into, what he had done”. In another case, a P-plater convicted of aggravated dangerous driving occasioning death had his sentence increased after the WA Court of Appeal labelled the two years’ imprisonment he was handed — 18 months of which was suspended — as “plainly unjust.” Luke Ridout was driving in excess of 150km/h — more than twice the speed limit — when he lost control of his car and flipped it, killing one of his friends. He was re-sentenced to four years and four months in prison, with eligibility for parole after two years and four months. Other cases the DPP successfully appealed related to significant drug offences, persistent family violence assaults and serious child sex offences, with jail terms extended after the original sentences “failed to reflect the seriousness of the offending”, were “very lenient” or “unreasonable.” “State appeals are concerned with establishing principles for the guidance of sentencing judges,” the ODPP said in a statement to The West Australian. “In short, there must be something more than an individual sentence being manifestly inadequate before the State can commence an appeal against sentence.” DPP guidelines outline several factors which should be considered when State appeals against sentences are in play. Those include whether a sentence is “so disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime” that it reflects an error by the trial judge, if a sentence is “significantly out of line” compared to that of similar offences without reasonable cause. “The purpose of State appeals against sentence is to ensure that adequate, just, and proportionate standards of punishment for crime are established and maintained,” according to the guidelines. Chief Judge of the District Court Julie Wager and Attorney-General Tony Buti declined to comment on the DPP’s claims. “Judges of the District Court conducted 1650 sentencings in the 2024-25 financial year. The increase in appeals is proportionally consistent with the increase in the number of sentencing hearings and growth trends,” a courts’ spokeswoman said. A spokeswoman for Dr Buti said: “Due to the independence of both the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution and the judiciary, it would be inappropriate for the Attorney-General to respond.” The ODPP said while the spike in appeals is consistent with long-term growth, it has been compounded by other trends that are increasing the team’s workload. More self-representation in appeal courts has created “inefficiencies” for prosecutors to address, alongside a “steady increase” in appeals that have required the calling of new evidence, effectively turning proceedings into “their own mini-trial”. “Combined with the consequences of ever-increasing complexity and length of criminal prosecutions in the primary courts, this has resulted in a significant increase in the team’s workload over the past decade,” the report said. The ODPP also attributed the changing work environment and growing workloads to why it failed to meet its own 65 per cent target for filing indictments within three months. Fewer than half of the 2666 committals had indictments filed with the court within three months of committal date in the 2024-25 reporting period. The average number of days to file an indictment rose for the third year in a row to 107 in 2024-25, compared to 88 in 2021-22. But the ODPP blamed the “increasing volume” of evidence, “delays in obtaining and processing drug analysis, forensic and medical evidence”, and the increase in domestic violence and serious sex-related crimes, which “carry sensitivities for vulnerable witness and victim engagement”. The State’s confiscations team also managed a mammoth workload in the past financial year, the ODPP said. Tasked with confiscating the property of declared drug traffickers and property connected with criminal and illegal activity, the team last year made its largest ever haul — with $29.9 million of criminal proceeds deposited into the State’s confiscated criminal proceeds account. The Attorney-General can use funds from the account for purposes that advance community interests, including victim safety programs and services, crime prevention initiatives, or to aid law enforcement. There was a fourfold increase in court applications for confiscations compared to the previous year, which the ODPP said “demonstrates a proactive response to the growing challenge of organised crime”. And while the confiscation team also continued to “address a significant backlog of historical cases, a task estimated to be years of dedicated work without additional resources”, the team managed to close more cases than received from police. “The confiscations team achieved significant productivity gains and continue to deprive offenders of the proceeds of their criminal conduct,” Mr Owen said in his report summary.