STATE OF TASMANIA v JOSHUA JOHN ATKINSON

COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE

6 FEBRUARY 2014
BLOW CJ

Joshua John Atkinson, you have pleaded guilty to five charges. The first and most serious
charge is a charge of being found prepared for the commission of a crime.
In the middle of the night in Launceston on 7 April last year you were apprehended by a
police officer when you were about to burgle a newsagency. You had prepared yourself for
the commission of that crime by masking your face with an item of clothing and by arming
yourself with a handgun which was unregistered, loaded and in full working order, with one
cartridge in the chamber, ready to fire. There were two other cartridges in the magazine.
It probably would have been no use to you as an item of equipment in a burglary unless you
were unexpectedly surprised, but if that burglary had gone ahead and if you had been
unexpectedly surprised, then there is no telling what might have happened. Somebody could
have been killed. So I regard this as a serious crime, and a very serious example of this
particular type of crime. Sometimes people get charged with this crime if they are found in
the street with a screwdriver and a pair of gloves, or with a set of picklocks, but this is a very
serious example of this type of crime.
The other charges are summary offences that I am dealing with under s 385A of the Criminal
Code. You have pleaded guilty to possessing an unregistered firearm, to possessing
ammunition when you were not the holder of the appropriate firearm licence, to possessing a
loaded firearm in public when not the holder of a firearm licence, and to possessing a firearm
when not the holder of a firearm licence of the appropriate category. Those charges all relate
to the same gun on the same night. As I have said, it was unregistered. And you were not the
holder of any sort of licence.
Another aspect of this is that there were two accomplices involved in the plan to commit a
burglary, but they got away.
Although you did not draw your gun when you were apprehended by the police, the fact that
the officers who attended found themselves in a situation where they were dealing with
someone armed with a loaded gun has caused them both anxiety, in one case possibly to a
surprising degree. The senior officer who arrested you and found the gun, to his credit, has
said that he does not want your sentence increased because of the impact on him. Another
aspect of this, of course, is that it counts in your favour that you have pleaded guilty and it
counts in your favour that, as a result, neither of those officers has had to go through the
unpleasant experience of coming to Court and giving evidence.
You are 27 years old. You have had a drug problem. You committed these offences as a result
of that drug problem. Your counsel has told me that you wanted to get involved in the Court
Mandated Diversion program and that you were not able to do so because there was not a
place and there is no longer a waiting list. I think it is very unfortunate that the authorities do
not have the funding to make available as many places as are needed for these programs. We
would be a lot better off if more people were able to undertake them and be rehabilitated by
means of these programs.
Really the only things of significance to be taken into account in your favour are that you
have pleaded guilty, and that, since your arrest and imprisonment in August of last year, you

have done all the rights things about rehabilitation and overcoming your drug problem,
including arranging accommodation with your father where you do not have to see your old
associates, and arranging employment through him. I should add it also counts in your favour
that you have been in custody since August of last year serving sentences, and that the
sentence that I impose will be something that comes on top of other sentences that you are
serving.
You have been to prison before. You have got a fairly bad record of prior convictions for all
sorts of things, including firearms offences. In July 2013 you were sentenced to 16 months'
imprisonment, with 8 months suspended, for a variety of offences. In November 2014 the 8month suspended component of that sentence was activated, and you were sentenced to a
cumulative term of imprisonment of 6 months' imprisonment, again for a variety of offences
which you had committed while the suspended sentence was hanging over your head. There
was an 8-month non-parole period. The result of all this is that you have been in custody
since 8 August and will be eligible for parole on 8 April.
I am going to impose a sentence that will date from today, so that it will be a partly
cumulative sentence, and I think it is appropriate to impose the shortest possible non-parole
period, but there can never be a non-parole period shorter than 6 months.
Taking all these matters into account, I convict you on the five charges and I impose a global
sentence of imprisonment for 10 months as from today. And I order that you will not be
eligible for parole until you have served 6 months of that sentence. You will have to pay
victims of crime compensation levies of $130, and you will have 28 days in which to pay that
amount.