JERSEY courts have a reputation for imposing stiff sentences on those who commit genuinely serious crimes.

It seems, however, that the harshest punishments are most readily applied to one category of offender – those who import and deal in substantial quantities of illegal drugs.

Many Islanders would say that it is right and proper that the full weight of the law should be felt by the peddlers of dangerous substances that blight lives. That said, there would be widespread agreement among Islanders that crimes of violence also merit severe deterrent penalties.

Unfortunately, the outcome of a case heard last week by the Royal Court suggests that the sentencing balance is not always as it should be.

In essence, a 51-year-old man who had drunk 12 pints of lager and who was disturbing other clients at the Hotel Ambassadeur with foul language and insults directed at a Romanian barman committed a premeditated baseball-bat assault which left his victim bleeding heavily from a head wound. To make matters worse, the court heard that the assailant, who admitted committing a grave and criminal assault, has a bad record of violent conduct, with 17 previous convictions to his name.

Quite rightly, the assailant was sent to prison, but it is legitimate to ask if his sentence – of just 18 months – was in at all appropriate. Any term of imprisonment is, of course, a mark of the community’s abhorrence of conduct beyond the pale, but the message broadcast by an 18-month sentence for an assault which, quite conceivably, might have caused disabling injury or even death must be that extreme violence is no longer among the most serious crimes that our society has to confront.

If a brutal drunken attack on an unarmed man who had merely asked the perpetrator to moderate his language and act civily does not merit a truly exemplary sentence, what does?

Judges in the UK have come in for criticism for imposing swingeing penalties on men and women convicted of theft and violent activity in the recent riots in London, Birmingham and Manchester. In spite of this condemnation and, it is fair to say, some instances of judicial excess, it is hard to resist the idea that the English judiciary has its finger more firmly on the pulse of public opinion – and effective deterrent policy – than our own bench.